Recently I wrote a post commenting on whether we were too busy to be successful. The post received a lot of views, and has been shared quite widely. Thanks to all those who responded: I did read your comments.

Since then, I have been thinking more about this topic, and a quote by theologian and philosopher Albert Schweitzer will give you an immediate indication of how my thinking has evolved: “Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.”

Looking at my own career, I have enjoyed considerable success, particularly once I figured out how to manage the busy-ness that throws up so many distractions. That success is based on things I can do well, such as:

• Facilitating meetings
• Producing and hosting large events
• Leading teams
• Driving sales performance
• Instigating business transformation
• Digging in to large volumes of data to draw conclusions that drive strategic decisions
• Engaging in meetings, conferences, and summits
• Doing all the above in different countries, sometimes at short notice

I can do these things well. I am well paid for doing these things. And, therefore, I am considered to be successful. I have Gold status on British Airways. I have a nice car, a nice house, I wear clothes with a variety of designer labels, I travel on my own dime when I have the chance and inclination, I have expensive pastimes.

But am I happy? Or am I so busy being successful that I need to live a lavish lifestyle to disguise my basic dissatisfaction with life?

What makes me happy?

• Being creative, a free-thinking thought leader, not necessarily in a corporate environment, but ideally in situations where I can directly help or entertain others.
• Challenging myself to perform in extreme situations.
• Driving too fast.
• Experiencing the lifestyles of others, often in remote locations.
• Having time to observe life, and document my thoughts and conclusions.
• Helping others to understand how they can be happy and successful.
• Hanging out with my cat, wearing a t-shirt and jeans, enjoying a good bottle of red wine.

That’s about it. And yet I find that I spend at least 90% of my time being successful, and often less than 10% of my time being happy.

What if I could be more successful doing the things that make me happy?

What would that look like? And what does “being successful” really mean? There will, no doubt, be comments about this, but I look at Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, and I consider that being successful would mean being able to take the basics for granted: air, water, food, clothing, shelter. We then layer on the need for safety which includes personal security, financial security, health and well-being. For many, this is sufficient to claim success.

But it goes further. If I am successful at securing these on an on-going basis, I will start to develop a level of self-esteem which helps drive confidence and then self-actualisation. A quote related to self-actualisation says “What a man can be, he must be,” and I really believe that being successful at things that do not make you happy, is not self-actualisation; instead it is a means of providing the two base layers of Maslow’s Hierarchy, food, shelter etc., and financial security.

Is that enough?

I don’t think it is. As far as we know, we only live once. Why waste any of that time focused purely on doing things which only provide a very basic level of satisfaction? Don’t we owe it to ourselves to develop a better sense of self-esteem, grow our confidence, and be willing to devote the majority of our time to what makes us happy? And as Schweitzer intimated, the happier we are, the more successful we are likely to be, and with that comes a level of self-transcendence, a higher goal which exists outside ourselves.

Is a job title really that important? Only if the outcome will make you happy. A better job title might result in increased self-esteem and confidence, which will satisfy a basic need. But how transient is that job title? Is it really “you?” How many more of that job title are out there? And what does your title mean outside the company you work for? Probably very little. I could pass the CEO of a Fortune 100 company on the street in London and it would make no difference to me whatsoever. I am sure he/she is well regarded inside their organisation, and within their sphere of influence and communications reach. But beyond that, is the CEO happy? Or are they just successful at being a company leader?

Taking the Leap

Taking the leap from being successful doing things that do not make us happy, to being successful as a result of doing things that make us happy, is a leap that many of us are too scared to take. It can be a huge leap in to the unknown, and your success will be largely driven by your own confidence and ability to prevail even in very difficult circumstances. And yet if we had taken a different path earlier in life, perhaps pursued our passion and abilities in a particular skill, or sport, instead of taking a safe route through internship, or a graduate degree, we might be happier right now, rather than spending at least half the week looking forward to the weekend. We would have established the basics of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs based on the different path that we took. We would have established personal and financial security, and we would have established self-esteem and self-actualisation.

If we missed an opportunity to follow our passion from a younger age, making the leap later in life can be a bigger risk. And yet all those I have spoken to about this topic, almost without exception, have told me that they are extremely happy and wish they had taken the leap earlier in life.

So I am spending more time reviewing what I am successful at, and figuring out my options to morph what makes me happy in to what will also make me successful. It makes my stomach flutter with nerves to just consider making this a reality. At the same time, it is exciting, motivating, aspirational, and entirely up to me to make it happen.