Three Powerful Secrets About Success That No One Tells You

Photo by Stefan Steinbauer on Unsplash

You’re sick and tired of all the false promises being thrown at you.

People make it sound so easy to achieve the life of your dreams if only you work hard.

But lets face it, there are plenty of times you did work hard and you failed.

And you’re probably familiar with this usual formula:

Work hard, get into a good school, and then get a good job that has benefits and a retirement plan.

Then you spend each year trying to make more money than the last. You answer to a boss that doesn’t particular care for your personal growth.

You worked so hard to get to where you thought you wanted to be only to have the veil lifted to a life a life of redundancy and routine.

The part that no one tells you though is while this formula will provide you comfort and stability, there’s only about a 50% chance that it will make you fulfilled.

I remember when I got my first six figure job right out of college. It was one of the most anticlimactic moments ever.

I still carried all my inner junk. I still had my trust issues, low self esteem and self-doubt.

I still felt like a failure.

To make things even more confusing, there’s the vague advice that some other people give you.

“Just do whatever makes you happy”

“Follow your passions and the money will follow”

“Just wait, I’m sure you’ll figure things out”

All of this just made me feel even more stuck.

So what is the secret to success and why is it so hard for us to achieve it?

Simon Sinek, author of Start With Why once shared a very enlightening story.

“I went to an event for high-performing entrepreneurs and the question was asked of the room, ‘How many of you have achieved your financial goals?’ Amazingly, 80 percent of the room raised their hand. Then the question was asked, ‘How many of you feel successful?’ and 80 percent of the hands went down. This example alone shows that there is little to no connection between the standard measurement of success and the feeling of success.”

Also, here’s a tweet from famous singer, John Mayer, for you to think about.

Here’s the bottom line.

The definition of success is severely misunderstood.

Success is a more than just an achievement.

For so much of my life, I chased after the next accomplishment I wanted under my belt.

I’ve travelled the world, made films with different celebrities in it, and I’ve obtained a six figure salary, but none of that helped me feel successful until I started digging deeper and learning what really made me feel the most fulfilled.

This was when it hit me.

For so much of my life, I was chasing after things other people told me would make me feel successful.

I thought having more money, becoming more well-known, and having more accomplishments would make me feel successful, but it didn’t. I just ended up in a vicious cycle where I was constantly on a chase for the next big thing.

The big problem is that we inaccurately chase after the things we are told that will make us feel successful.

Andre Agassi was one of the best tennis players in the world and he openly admitted he hated tennis. The only reason he pursued it was because his dad pushed him so hard to do so.

Tiger mom’s push their children to an extreme extent so that they can enter into a life of prestige and status.

Even friends around us believe wrong things about success and are busy being consumed with chasing after money and fame only because that’s what society convinced them to buy into.

There is a huge disconnect with what people tell us will make us feel successful versus what actually does.

It’s no surprise that there are studies that show almost 50% of Americans report being disengaged at their jobs.

On top of that, 1 in 6 Americans are taking some form of psychiatric medication. Antidepressant are the most common followed by anti-anxiety meds.

So I went on a personal journey to study and figure out what makes people actually feel successful.

And I found some really insightful information that goes beyond the cliche advice you see in the self-help books.

After meeting many people who are both successful and happy, here are the top three things that I’ve found that they all have in common.

1. The Truly Successful Take Full Ownership of Their Own Story

People who find true success don’t achieve it by accident. They are very intentional and do the hard work to figure out what matters to them most.

Rather than blindly listening to every piece of advice from friends, peers and family on how they should live their lives, truly successful people understand that the life they are living is their own and it’s their full responsibility to take total ownership of it.

They do this because they understand one harsh truth:

It’s actually easier to live a life someone else tells you to live because then you have someone to blame if things go wrong.

There is no easy path to success. The ones who achieve true success know that life isn’t about making life easier, it’s about making yourself stronger.

And the only way to get yourself stronger is to start living your life like you are the main character of your own story. It means to stop sitting on the sidelines letting life go by and getting on the court and giving everything your best shot.

They understand that passion is not found, but built. They do the inner work it takes to connect with their true self and make their lives a reflection of that regardless of what people have to say about it.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” — Theodore Roosevelt

2. The Truly Successful Get Their Minds Out of Survival Mode

There’s an almond sized part of our brain known as the amygdala, also referred to as our lizard brains. What it does is it looks out for your survival.

It’s the part of your brain that triggers intense fear if you saw a mountain lion chasing after you in the distance.

With all the responsibilities that get thrown on us and the pressure to live up to other people’s expectations, our brains are frantically in a mode of this same feeling of survival mode.

Here are some things that happen when you are in lizard brain mode.

• Can’t think clearly and often make irrational decisions. (When really angry you say horrible things that you later regret)
• In tunnel vision and unable to see the big picture.
• Often anxious, fearful and in a rush.
• Solely focused on money and how to make more of it. It often strains relationships as well.

And all these fears that kick in will force your brain into survival mode.

The crappy part of being in survival mode is that while your lizard brain is active in full force, the thinking part of our brain known as the pre-frontal cortex becomes inactive.

The very thing that our brain is trying to do to help us survive is preventing us from figuring out how to get out of our situations in the first place.

This is because when you are in survival mode, you're in a reactive state. When you are in thinking mode, you’re in a proactive state.

When you constantly live life in a reactive state, you don’t spend enough time using your thinking brain on what changes you can make to get yourself out of it.

So how do you get your brain out of survival mode especially when you are in really difficult circumstances with bills to bay and mouths to feed?

The answer lies in finding time to give yourself a safe space. Even if it’s only for a moment, you need to find a place where you are free from all the pressure, expectations and circumstances.

And when I say safe space, I’m not talking about an escape. An escape is used to run away from your hardships or numb yourself to uncomfortable feelings.

A safe space is where you free yourself from all the crazy whirlwinds of thoughts and emotions to be who you really are and be able to think things through with your head straight.

And one of the simplest ways to do this is meditation.

Meditation helps you get out of survival mode and activate the part of your brain that is capable of very important functions needed to help you change your situation such as critical thinking, decision making and logical reasoning.

A great app I use is Headspace, which has a free version.

3. The Truly Successful Utilize Both Halves of Their Brains

We have two halves of our brains that serve very different purposes. The left half of our brains are the logical side. It’s where our language and logical reasoning come from. The right side of our brain is where our emotions come from.

Both sides are equally important to our mental health, but the reality is most people tend to be more dominant on one side depending on their experiences.

I coached an individual once who was extremely logical and tried to make sense of every little detail. He would tell me when he watches a basketball game, he would start becoming focused on all the little details of how the game works to wondering about how they set up the court and what materials they used for the backboards.

I found out later on in the conversation that his dad cheated on mom when he was a kid. To add even more drama to the story, it turns out dad was a pastor.

Never being able to properly process his emotions and make sense of things as a child pushed his left brain into overdrive to always try and make sense of everything.

I can relate to his feeling to an extent, but it made me realize one of the biggest reasons for my unhappiness no matter what I tried was because I was only dominant in one half of my brain.

Every successful person I’ve met were very integrated in utilizing both halves of their brains. They were both logically intelligent and emotionally intelligent.

Dr. Daniel J. Siegel shares a lot on how to integrate both halves of your brain in his bestselling book, Mindsight. I’ve read this book over and over again and it’s one of the key reasons I learned how to discover the things that actually make me feel successful.

The Road to Real Success

It’s much easier to try and find a formula for your life, but it won’t guarantee happiness and meaning in your life.

Whether it’s a business you’re trying to start, a movement you’re trying to spark, or a non-profit you are trying to build, none of it will make you truly fulfilled until you become more aware of how you are wired and connect with who you really are.

So before you do all the outer work to try and change your circumstances, start with the necessary inner work to change your inner world before changing the outer one.

Then you will finally feel the success you’ve been chasing after all along.

How to Live Out Your Unique Calling

Now is a time more than ever where your skills, talents, and potential are desperately needed.

If you’ve been becoming more aware that you’ve been feeling stuck, then you might be wondering how you can begin to tap into the part of yourself that’s extraordinary.

The part of you that you know deep down can make a great impact on the world.

If that’s you, then learn how neuroscience can significantly improve your decision making, critical thinking, and creative skills in my free in-depth training, How to Activate Your Brain’s Superpowers: A science-backed approach to discover your passions, find your purpose and transform your life

Cheers to keeping life beautiful.

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