As someone who places importance in their personal or professional development, I wouldn’t mind betting you set pretty high standards for yourself.
Of course it’s great to have goals and even better when we reach them. But sometimes this endless striving comes at a price: our simple enjoyment of where we are at the moment.
I’m certainly guilty of being too ruled by this need to achieve. Just the other day I was browsing in a jewellery shop, when a pretty silver beaded bracelet caught my eye. Now, I’m a firm believer in rewarding yourself as you tick off major steps towards your goals. Unfortunately, I hadn’t made much progress recently. I hadn’t earned my bracelet.
Then I thought - what a miserable way to live! Always needing to justify oneself. I resolved to buy my bracelet - FOR NO REASON! That simple purchase gave me the best high I’d had all week.
It’s a trivial example, but illustrates an important point. In today’s post I’m giving myself a further break, by including an excerpt from a great book - the Art of Possibility - which tackles this achievement need head on. The authors say it much better than I could, and I’m going to use the time I’ve saved to watch a Crime Scene Investigation DVD over a gin and tonic.
The drive to be successful and the fear of failure are, like the head and the tail of a coin, inseparably linked. They goaded me on to unusual efforts and caused me, and those around me, considerable suffering. Of course, the surprising thing was that my increasing success did little to lessen the tension.
Until the splash of cold water. My second wife walked away from the marriage midstream.
Going down for the second time, I understood and grabbed hold. I saw the whole thing was made up and that the game of success was just that, a game. I realised I could invent another…. I settled on a game called I am a contribution.
Unlike success and failure, contribution has no other side. It is not arrived at by comparison. All at once I found that the fearful question “Is it enough?”…could be replaced by the joyful question, “How will I be a contribution today?”
When I began playing the game of contribution..I found there was no “better”. In the game of contribution you wake up each day and bask in the notion that you are a gift to others.
The Art of Possibility by Benjamin and Rosamund Zander
