The Hidden Gold Standard of Success
And the 2 questions that reveal it.
Human connection is the gold standard of success. Maybe not to Michael Jordan or Alex Honnold, but to the majority of us what matters most when asked to reflect on individual success, or what we are most proud of, is how well we’ve impacted other people’s lives — how well we did at human connection. That’s how we measure our true success over our lifetimes.
Proof of this is in the answers to a journaling exercise by Jim Loehr. But before that, it’s worth noting what led me to my own realization about human connection.
Past Year Review
I just completed Tim Ferriss’s Past Year Review, which is where you go through your calendar of the last 12 months and highlight the 20% of activities, people, and commitments that brought you your most positive emotional peaks.
You then highlight the 20% of activities, people, and commitments which brought you your most negative emotional peaks. The idea is to schedule in all the positive peaks for your next year and steer clear, as much as you can, of the negative peaks.
When I did the exercise I noticed a correlation just halfway through February. Almost all of my positive highlights involved interactions with people and the best ones were time spent engaging in my favorite relationships, old and new.
As I went through the whole year this just became clearer, providing me with an enlightening (if a bit of an obvious) revelation:
Engaging in my favorite relationships and building new, exciting ones brings me my most positive emotional experiences.
And it worked the other way too, my most negative emotional peaks were from when I’d fallen out with people, been short with a family member, hadn’t made the time for a friend, or let somebody down.
This exercise and revelation made me realize what brings me the most joy in life, and what to invest in to lead a happier, more fulfilling one — my relationships.
Like Patrick Ewers says in his article on the 1 thing to focus on to lead a happier, more fulfilling life:
“The quality of our life — emotionally, physically, and mentally — is directly proportional to the quality of our relationships.”
It also reminded me of a podcast of Mr. Ferriss’ which backed this up. It was with Dr. Jim Loehr, who spoke about the surprising results he got from a journaling exercise that led him to discover a hidden scorecard we all hold over ourselves, and subsequently, our gold standard of success.
2 questions to identify your standard of success
Dr. Jim Loehr is a world-renowned performance psychologist and bestselling author. In his latest book, Leading with Character, he provides specific questions and journaling methods to help people discover what values are really important to them, and how to live by them.
What I remembered from the podcast were two questions he asked listeners to think about, that he has carried out with thousands of people in small groups all over America.
#1
The first was this, he asked us to identify who we are when we’re most proud of ourselves. Particularly in stressful situations. He says to question who we are physically, emotionally, and mentally.
To do this he says to write down 6 or 8 words in 5 minutes that best describe you when you are most proud of yourself after overcoming stressful circumstances.
If you’d like to do this exercise now for yourself or just to test your own results against his, pause here and take 5 minutes to write them down.
Who are you when you’re most proud of yourself?
I did the exercise before continuing with the podcast and came up with: ‘encouraging, calm, helpful, caring, keeping my sense of humor, brave.’
According to Dr. Loehr, so did everyone else.
And when we’re finished, everyone is in the state of shock because they believe that everyone copied from their paper, because everyone came up with the same bloody thing almost, it was incredible.
And noticeably absent from the list were the things that people often feel like they’re chasing: I feel like I’m at my best when I’m winning, when I’m making a lot of money, when I’m winning titles, when I am finishing a great paper that just got accepted by a peer-reviewed group in some journal, on and on and on. No one ever mentioned those things.
They would mention things like when I’m 100% there, fully engaged with others, when I’m trustworthy, when I’m compassionate, when I’m kind.
#2
The second question Dr. Loehr asked the audience to think about was this:
‘What 6–8 words would you like on your tombstone? That are chosen by those who knew you best, which reflect who you truly were.’
Again, if you wish, take 5 minutes to write down the words or phrases you would like to be remembered by.
For Dr. Loehr it was the same result as before:
“… everyone absolutely freaks out because the list (is) just pretty much the same across the whole room and no one coached anybody about anything.”
And no one said, “I made CEO of a Fortune 50 company,” or “I won the Olympic gold medal in my event three times,” none of that, on any level, was present.
What they were actually referencing was their connection to other people that was somehow (the) standard, that was deeply ingrained in the cells of their body.
That’s the gold standard of what kind of human being they were. And this is how they want to be remembered: a person of integrity, a person who was honest and loving and caring and humble and brought joy to other people’s lives.”
The Hidden Scorecard
Dr. Loehr makes the significant point that everyone who did the exercises went to a moral and ethical category when determining who they are at their very best and how they want to be remembered.
Because of this, he speaks of a hidden scorecard in all of us that evaluates how our lives are being lived, and this internal scorecard is not to do with our extrinsic measures of success but to do with our treatment of others.
We do still hold a scorecard for success in our careers, sports, and hobbies, but it is not the main one.
Our proudest and most fulfilling life achievements are the relationships we’ve made
In a coronavirus related article entitled ‘What is Death?’ by BJ Miller, an end of life physician and Medium writer, he suggests that the pandemic has brought about a wonderfully important awareness:
“As individuals we are limited, but through our connections and relationships we are vast.”
We grasp so much more of life’s potential, happiness, and fulfillment in our best relationships as opposed to when we are alone.
This is why lockdowns have been so hard.
I have led quite a lone-wolf existence for the past 7 years, in that, I have moved place and changed job 2–3 times per year where I don’t know anyone.
I’m not great at keeping in touch but I do with the people I connect with the most, and I fully embrace every micro-culture I land in and thrive off the relationships that I’m lucky to make.
It’s only from doing the Past Year Review and hearing Dr. Loehr’s findings that I realize how important those relationships have been for me. The top positive emotional peaks are the best moments I’ve had with others, not the best moments I’ve had alone.
It is a balance for me as stealing a day to wander through a cool city, get lost up a new mountain, or soak up an empty coastline completely to myself might be one of the best days of my year.
But it doesn’t beat the day I spent in the sun with a handful of friends who make my soul thrive, that ended up being a night of dancing on the street in front of a live band. Those days are just better, or vaster.
BJ Miller’s article on the pandemic is uplifting, as he says beyond fear and isolation, maybe what living in the face of death has brought us is a “cascade of realization and appreciation,” of what and who we love, leading to a deepening of our relationships, and therefore, our human connections.
