Success…Aristotle on Winning Lily Pads

Success and winning is finding your own lily pad on the pond of life: your own definition of success…your own rules for your happiness.

And winning is variety in that it’s different for each of us.

According to Aristotle, your journey is far more important than the outcome. Outcomes that result from deliberate action and intention have much greater value to you.

They make your success that much sweeter.

For outcomes to be satisfying and fulfilling to you, they have to have value…you have to feel like the journey is progressing toward our own best destiny.

And only you can determine for yourself what’s of greatest value to you and then do what’s best for you….for your success.

For Artistotle, it’s about the meaning and value you derive from being intentional, from being in deliberate control of your life’s own direction.

And making your life/work leap from good to great is about finding the right new lily pad for you.

Your lily pad is the place from which you currently view your world … your perspective that tells you what it means to be successful and fulfilled in your work and your life.

We all have our own “culture:” ways of thinking, ways of being, ways of orienting ourselves to our world. We each have a different interpretation of what it means to be alive and happy in this life, for right now.

So you can think of the collective world as a giant pond … with a lily pad for everyone to call home. We hop from lily pad to lily pad in life in search of a perspective that fits the intersection of your strengths and passions … testing different iterations of the person and life we are becoming.

We might stay on a pad for only a moment, before realizing we want to be on the next one.

When you continue to explore new paths, and hop from lily pad to lily pad in search of the right perspective, you are most likely to find the path that sweeps you to an extraordinary life…your success.

Similarly, when it is functioning at its best, your mind is constantly seeking out new connections and expanding its knowledge. It pursues change and is constantly changed in the process.

Exercise: Try writing down the 10 things you most love to do and how many times you’ve done them in the last year. How does it feel? Do you want to feel more of that? How can you start to incorporate more of that in your daily life?

Striving toward goals that fulfill you, that you love, that are in sync with your own inner life…these are what give your journey meaning and are sustenance that satisfies who you really are. Be willing to define success in your personal terms.

What are the benchmarks of your own success and happiness? Pause to consider what definition of “success” and “happiness” best suits you.

People who explore numerous paths, a variety of roles, different industries, even living in different cities and sometimes nations, were then the ones who broke out of the crowd and did amazing things with their work lives.

I know this to be true from my own experience. I’ve working in banking, financial services, hospitality, healthcare, executive search, social services, luxury consumables, greeting cards, real estate, direct sales, and software in various roles and capacities … and lived in San Diego, Germany, Austria, San Francisco, rural northern California Wine Country and at Lake Tahoe. I feel like I’m doing amazing things with my work life in this moment as well.

So try seeing the world through your own eyes, playing according to rules you have set, aspiring to goals that count for you as you successfully orchestrate your own leap to living at your own intersection of passions and strengths.

This article was inspired by the final chapter of Rick Smith’s brilliant bestselling book, The Leap: How 3 Simple Changes Can Propel Your Career from Good to Great (Portfolio). Rick is also the author of the popular blog, RickSmith.me. He is the co-author of the Wall Street Journal and Business Week bestseller The 5 Patterns of Extraordinary Careers, which has been sold into 13 languages and remains one of the top-selling professional career books of all time.

What are success, happiness and winning for you? What do you love doing? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

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© 2009 ChristineHueber.com

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