This is Optimal Living Daily, Episode 1194, how to go from successful to very successful, and why most people can't do it, by Benjamin Hardy of Benjaminhardy.com, and I'm Justin Molick, hey, happy Tuesday, welcome back to Optimal Living Daily, where I narrate blogs for you, pretty simple premise. Today's post is from the very popular writer on medium.com, Benjamin Hardy. I'm gonna jump right into today's content, so let's get right to it, and start optimizing your life. How to go from successful to very successful, and why most people can't do it, by Benjamin Hardy of Benjaminhardy.com.
Success is an obsession. Many people want it more than anything else, and they'll sacrifice everything to have it, which is often the cost of admission. But there's a problem. Sustaining success and going beyond success is nearly impossible for most people.
Hence Greg McEwen, author of Essentialism questions, why don't successful people and organizations automatically become very successful? McEwen's answer is succinct. Success is a catalyst for failure. Being invisible is easy.
When you make mistakes, you're the only one who notices, even being the underdog is easy. If you fail, you're justified in doing so. But when the spotlight is on you, everyone is waiting for you to fail. The external pressure often becomes too overpowering, smothering the values and vision it took to become successful in the first place, which is why success is often a short-lived experience.
People come and go. Very few remain on top for long. For example, only eight NFL teams have won the Super Bowl back-to-back. As 49ers coach Bill Walsh has said, the toughest thing I ever had to do was get my team to overcome success disease.
When you have first Super Bowl according to Walsh is enormously easier than winning a second or third. This is true in all life domains. If you succeed in business, life doesn't get easier, it gets harder. Success is much harder to deal with than failure.
Quote, nearly all men can stay in adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power. Abraham Lincoln. For most people, privilege is a poison. Once you succeed or have certain privileges, each time, money, fame, accolades, one of two things happens.
One, your focus shifts from the cause of your success to its effects. Rather than continuing to hone your craft, you indulge in the benefits of your prior success, which inevitably damages future performance. Hence, the saying success gives a generation. The children who are successful don't learn the causes, but only relish in the benefits.
Or two, you experience an intensification of internal pressure to keep succeeding. Many people can't handle this level of pressure and it often ends careers prematurely. Yet this escalation of internal pressure is what prevents a person from being consumed by external noise like distraction that comes with success. As Robert Hori former NBA player has said, pressure can burst a pipe or pressure can make a diamond.
Internal, not external pressure is what makes you successful. Increasing the pressure is what keeps you going. Success versus achievement. The difference between success and achievement is subtle, but crucial.
Success is a subjective feeling about how you're doing relative to why you're doing it. Achievement is an objective measure about what you've actually done. Yet success is far more important than achievement. Indeed, you could have all the achievements in the world and not be successful.
You see this all the time, people who have many external indicators of success, yet inwardly they are a wreck. They've lost their why and thus no longer remember the reason they are pursuing their goals in the first place. What once was a genuine passion has now become a need for more external validation and endless need to acquire and achieve more. Thus rather than focusing on why, the focus becomes on what will work and doing as much of that as possible, most likely at the expense of your values.
According to Seth Godin, quote, art is when a human being does something that might not work, end quote. When you're focused on what, you only care if it works, you no longer know why you're doing it. Interestingly, many successful entrepreneurs admit being happier before they were quote unquote successful, back when their motivations were congruent with their values. Achievement poisoned them and their motivation changed.
When your motivation shifts from intrinsic to extrinsic, your performance naturally drops over the long run. You may be able to sustain high performance for a while, often at cost of your health, relationships and finances. From successful to very successful quote, success is something you attract by the person you become, Jim Rohn. If success is your primary objective, you probably won't get it.
Chasing success is like chasing happiness. You can't pursue it directly. Both success and happiness ensue from something far more fundamental, who you are. Success comes from consistency to your vision and values.
Although difficult because of the added noise that comes from achievement, becoming very successful requires remaining consistent to your vision and values, who you are. When you stay consistent and true, you'll continue to hone your craft, even after you become world-class. You'll say no to all of the distractions that come your way, no matter how enticing they are. You won't let your ego inflate and forget who you really are.
You won't abandon your values and the most important people in your life. Don't forget your why. That may be the hardest thing you do as you seek to improve your life. As Ryan Holiday recently said of Tim Ferriss, he does what he does because he enjoys it.
And he's compelled to create, experiment, and improve because that's who he is. Tim is still Tim. Most people are made worse by success, and that's a shame. It is suited to him well, and that's a model I aspire to.
You just listened to the post title to How to Go From Successful to Very Successful and My Most People Can't Do It by Benjamin Hardy of Benjaminhardy.com. That hit home for me, like with sponsors of this show, as this podcast became more popular, it became easier for me to make a living from it by having sponsors. But some of the companies we hear from do not align with our values, so I have to turn them down. It's harder to turn those to home because that's what keeps all of this sustainable, producing and editing around 1,200 episodes of this show alone.
But I don't want to accept anything because I think that's even less sustainable than accepting money and promoting something that doesn't align with our values here. I was lucky enough to have sponsors last week that I felt were a good fit. That's a big help to keep this running. If I didn't have that, I wouldn't still be doing this, but you can actually get rid of the ads and promo stuff that I mentioned over and over on this show.
Just by becoming a monthly patron for only $2 a month, you can contribute more to get handwritten cards from me and more, but to remove the ads, promotional content, ending music, all of that stuff, it's only $2 a month. You can do that and learn more at oldpodcast.com. Our patrons mean a lot to us. That's enough for today.
Have a great rest of your day and I'll see you tomorrow where you're optimal life awaits. All right.