‘She’s hugely successful.’ I wonder why that pronouncement always makes me feel slightly uncomfortable. Especially when the judgement hinges on a flash new convertible or expensive taste in suits. I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I can’t imagine personal success to be something that can be observed with the naked eye. Is real success not that feeling when you realise you are doing/becoming what you believe you were destined to do/be?

‘Know thyself’, the ancient Greek sages are still whispering today. What drives you? What gives you energy? What makes you feel ALIVE? What chases you out of bed because you can’t wait to get back to your waking life? What keeps you up until the small hours of the morning and turns sleep into an unwelcome interruption? As children we have no problem figuring this one out. We all are successful.

Over the years many of our dreams become compromised, replaced by fear of falling behind financially, of depending on others or becoming a ‘nobody’. When fear replaces trust we start to feel lost.

Trusting his gut feeling, believing things will work out alright, Steve Jobs dropped out of college, not knowing what he wanted to do with his life. Instead, he started dropping into only the classes that interested him. He took up calligraphy and learned all about creating really beautiful typefaces. Ten years later he worked that into the design of the first Macintosh computer, and much later his highly developed eye for aesthetics also gave us the coveted i-Pod and i-Phone. Successful – just by trusting himself and his own curiosity.

The first step on the way to success often seem to be a simple ‘no’ – dropping activities that you know are somebody else’s idea of time well spent. You might not have come face-to-face with your greatest passion yet, but you know what you’re not passionate about. If Jobs succumbed to the ambitions of his biological mother who insisted on his graduation even before his birth (his new parents could only adopt him after promising he’ll go to college), we might not have seen any other typeface but Times Roman today!

Does life have to be a choice between being rich and following your heart? Jobs never chose against wealth – he chose to follow his gut feeling and wealth was a by-product. I have met many people who would do their line of business even if they did not get paid for it: art, photography, design, cooking and other livelihoods so expressive and exciting that you would expect the thrill of the job to be a big enough reward in itself. But I continue to be amazed at the material abundance in their lives. Maybe rich and successful can be synonymous after all.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 1st, 2008 at 12:42 pm and is filed under Personal development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.