Success and/or Fulfillment

"To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded."
                  Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson's nineteenth century concept of success is a bit different than our twenty-first one, nowhere is having a lot of money mentioned or your own reality TV show or having the biggest house or driving the fanciest car.  The quality of his success appears to have more intrinsic qualities than our current culture with its extrinsic neon light variety.  Both are necessary aspects that have value.  I just can't help thinking that his intrinsic ones seem so much more fulfilling than what we chase as success today.  Plus, it seems to me that these intrinsic qualities have the added bonus of building character in the process of acquisition, something that is not really all that necessary in attaining modern success.  In fact, sometimes having too much character today can be an impediment to reaching the top rung.

In a recent article in The Economist, Clayton Christensen of Harvard Business School, is reported to have said that he is "struck, at alumni reunions, by how many of his fellow HBS graduates and Rhodes scholars had made a mess of their lives." *  To see the truth in these words, we don't have to look any further than Jeff Skilling former Enron bigwig who made $100 million a year and now is in prison for his "success."  The lesson to be taken is to choose wisely our goals as we move from status quo to the extraordinary and not to forget to add in the intrinsic values of character along the way.

Corporate culture because of its emphasis on results over human qualities breeds a dark shadow where in order to advance our softer connection sides need to be suppressed. To the victor and swiftest go the reward, everyone else is just an also ran.  Because of their hierarchical structure, work places prove the theme of Shakespeare's Macbeth - power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  To add to this boiling cauldron worthy of the three witches in Macbeth is the practice of rewarding for job performance.  Sounds good in theory but it can and does bring out our ruthless competive streak as well as prompting ethic over- rides in judgement.  This chase to the bottom line may prove profitable dollarwise but it bankrupts us as human beings.

Since the purpose of "serving lemonade"is to become extraordinary and not just successful, I wanted to put some caveats in place after the last blog on "Can/Can't."  The techniques discussed there if put into practice will lead to reaching your goals.  What needs to be pondered is if those goals are worthy of who you really are.  Why chase the superficial glitter of success if with more internal digging, you can become all that you can be to borrow from the U.S. Army slogan?  This added effort may very well revolutionize your life and dreams in the process as well as giving you the intestinal fortitude necessary to carry your success once you attain it. 

Henry David Thoreau, Emerson's protege, wrote, " If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours."  To become extraordinary to me means to have it all, the external success of whatever that means to each of us and to have developed the internal character traits along the way that leads to true fulfillment.  To be extraordinary is to live at that place where the miraculous occurs.  Why settle for anything less?  It does require more soul searching and honesty with ourselves but the end result is so much more worthwhile than going from the top of the heap earning $100 million a year to prison because your success was a false one built upon the sifting sands of time and not on integrity.  The choice as always is ours. 

* The Economist February 9th, 2013, Schumpeter, "Of Businessmen and ballerinas, Lessons from the Bolshoi brouhaha"