How many books have you read that trumpeted the message: becoming
tremendously successful is simply a matter of making the commitment to be more
successful, becoming more focused on your goals, or renewing a passion for your
chosen field of work? The number may be 2, 20, or 200, but undoubtedly you have
read them. Unfortunately, those type of books often only convince those people
who are already hardworking, diligent, and successful that they could be even
more successful if they just became fixated on their work. Paradoxically, people
who internalize any of these messages often become disenchanted with their
career, feel burned-out, and come to view themselves as inherently unsuccessful.
Why? Their definition of "success" is limited, and their obsession with their
career causes their lives to become out-of-balance. The good news is that
"success" really is yours for the taking. That is, success, as you choose to
define it.
The first step in defining what your Personal Pinnacle of Success will be is
to think about what "success" and being "successful" really mean. Webster’s
Online Dictionary (www.m-w.com) defines
"success" as a "degree or measure of succeeding," a "favorable or desired
outcome; also: the attainment of wealth, favor, or eminence," or "one who
succeeds." "Successful" is defined as "resulting or terminating in success" or
"gaining or having gained success."
I believe that most people decide whether or not they are successful by
focusing on reaching one particular objective rather than assessing if they are
leading lives that are rich in a number of areas. Usually, the objective is a
substantial amount of wealth or fame. At least, they categorize someone else as
"successful" because of that person’s observable power, prestige, fame, or
wealth. Yet, when I work with people who others consider to be highly
successful, I often find that they do not share that perception. In fact, they
perceive themselves to be quite unsuccessful. They think of themselves as
failures, even though they have met or exceeded their own goals, because the
amount of wealth or fame that they obtained was their singular measure for
determining if they were indeed successful. The lesson to be learned is that
fame and fortune are only one component of how success should be determined.
Before sliding down that slippery slope of unsatisfactory self-worth, I
encourage you to adopt a new and powerful plan for successful living: the
"Personal Pinnacle of Success." This model expands the definition of success.
Rather than measuring success in terms of a desired result in one area of your
life (e.g., becoming president of a corporation), the concept of success is
expanded to include the notion of "successful living." What does "successful
living" mean? Rather than focusing the majority of your time and effort in one
area of your life, your energy is distributed between five key areas. This
multifaceted approach significantly impacts how you organize your life, set your
priorities, and ultimately define your goals. Each area is important in and unto
itself. However, if any of these areas begins to monopolize your time, it can
have a toxic effect on your effort to live successfully.
The five key areas of the Personal Pinnacle of Success model are outlined
below:
Career: The scope of this area includes not only your chosen vocational
field or profession, but also your educational background, relationships with
your colleagues and clients, affiliation with professional organizations, and
any other relationships that you have associated with your career.
Community: This area encompasses your friends, acquaintances, religious
affiliation, neighborhood organizations, and any community group in which you
actively participate.
Conduct of Life: This area includes your moral, value, and belief systems
that cause you to conduct your life in a certain manner. It also includes the
important aspect of extending courtesies to people you interact with,
professionally and socially.
Family: This area includes your spouse (or significant other), children,
and extended family.
Personal Satisfaction: Happiness, inner peace, spirituality, a feeling
of wellness, maintaining a positive outlook toward life, the ability for
introspection, and other factors all are components of the area of personal
satisfaction.
In order to understand the significance of each these five key areas in your
life, draw an analogy to the elements and preparation that are necessary for a
successful mountain climbing expedition. Behind every good expedition is a
support group of sponsors and facilitators. Your nuclear and extended family
serves as the support group in your own life. In order to endure the physical
stress of climbing a mountain, you must have a certain level of training. In
life, your value and belief systems assist you in carrying on in spite of the
stress placed on your character as you move toward greater heights of success.
In order to for your to scale a mountain and reach its summit, you must have
premium equipment and superlative technique. In conquering your Personal
Pinnacle of Success, your education, career experience, and aspirations for
future success will enable you to reach the summit on which you have chosen to
focus. Any arduous expedition requires a partner or team that you can depend on
when your equipment fails or a boulder obstructs your path. A life journey also
requires a connection with supportive friends and community members. As you
achieve increasing greater levels of personal satisfaction in the course of your
own life, compare that to reaching plateaus and ultimately the summit of your
Personal Pinnacle of Success. This design for living successfully assures you
that your life will be rich in a wide variety of areas rather than having depth
in only one and shallowness or emptiness in others. This model also allows you
to define on your own terms what it means to be successful.
If you suffer from "chronic career over-focus," you may be concerned that
bringing the five key areas of your life into balance may be detrimental of your
career. My response is simple: don’t be. Living successfully allows you to enjoy
many aspects of your life. That enjoyment will likely have several unintended,
but positive, consequences. For example, the plan that you create to balance the
areas of your life may lead you to invest more time and energy in your own
community. Think of all the potential business related networking contacts that
you may make while donating time at your child’s school or to a community
service project. Bringing your life into greater balance will energize you,
expand your opportunities for success in all five areas, and lead to many
exceptionally interesting and beneficial unintended consequences!
How can you use this model to assure that you will be successful and live
successfully? This question can be answered by preparing for and embarking on an
expedition to your Personal Pinnacle of Success. During the initial planning and
mapping phase of your expedition, you will set a series of goals or benchmarks
to be achieved in each of the five key areas I have discussed. The goals that
you set in each area should be related to either improving how you function in
that area or the level of connectedness that you have with the area’s other
group members. You should expect to make periodic adjustments to your plan
throughout your journey to your Personal Pinnacle of Success. Just as a planned
course must be altered due to a rock slide or weather change, so too may you
alter your objectives within each area as you meet a goal or find that a life
change necessitates an adjustment in your plan.
Another required element of insuring your future success is designating the
balance that you want to achieve between the key areas. In making that
determination, you must ask yourself whether each area is of equal importance to
you, or if the areas will have varying levels of importance. Please remember
that successful living depends upon being connected with each of these areas. As
with most teams, each area will have its own strengths and weaknesses for you.
Each area will have its moment in time when it is the most important member of
your team. Many experienced mountain climbers will tell you that climbing
requires more balance than strength. As with climbing, achieving and possessing
strength in only one of the key areas of your life may cause the other areas to
atrophy and become dysfunctional. You may then be left with the feeling of
failure that some outwardly successful people experience that I described
earlier. Attaining and maintaining a balance between these five key areas of
your life will assure that you live successfully.
In your quest to reach your own Personal Pinnacle of Success, I encourage you
to periodically obtain the assistance of a success coach. Like an expert guide,
a coach will help you navigate the difficult straits along your journey and help
you to live more successfully.
At this point you may be thinking, "It seems that there will always be
something to work on. The journey to the peak of a mountain concludes when you
reach the summit. Does the journey to my Personal Pinnacle of Success ever end?
" It is true that there will be things for you to work on throughout the course
of your life. Just as you would not attempt to climb Mount Everest when you are
a novice mountaineer, you will not immediately reach your Personal Pinnacle of
Success.
Having a successful career, maintaining a successful relationship with your
family, conducting yourself in a manner deserving of people’s respect, becoming
a productive member of your community, and feeling satisfied all require
planning, hard work, and perseverance. Success is not a static event or single
goal to be met. There will always be a higher mountain to climb. Today you begin
your training to commence the greatest expedition of your life. Charting the
course and scaling the mountain that is your Personal Pinnacle of Success is a
life-long process. If your definitions of success and successful living evolve
throughout your lifetime, you will ultimately derive a sense of satisfaction
with your achievements as well as a feeling of being successful.
Undoubtedly, you have thought of additional questions such as:
"How do I achieve success in each area?"
"How do I determine what the balance I would like to achieve between the key
areas should be?"
"How do I move toward that balance?"
Those, my friend, are topics for other articles! I hope that you look forward
to reading about them in future issues of The Pinnacle Perspective. This
philosophy will be more fully described in my upcoming book: Your Personal
Pinnacle of Success: Balancing Your Life and Achieving Success.
Until then, may you soar toward your dreams and achieve balance in your life.
Copyright © 1998 Susan C. Rempel, Ph.D.
