Most people fantasize about having a lifestyle oozing with wealth, social status, and an abundance of opportunities. After all, this is the portrait of success that our society has painted.
Although there’s nothing wrong with wanting these things, something is missing from the picture: happiness.
Long has the external condition been prioritized over the internal condition, but a life of wealth means nothing if you’re miserable. Perhaps we’ve been looking at success from the wrong angle. Holistic success is a more substantial way to view success, which focuses on happiness rather than possession.
As so many of us are getting tired of the rat race and realizing that success, from a conventional view, is backward, we’re beginning to redefine what success means. With that said, let’s explore holistic success, and why it’s a better target than conventional success.
Holistic Success: Success Is a State of Consciousness
Holistic success is the idea that success is a state of consciousness rather than a fixed, material condition. For example, someone who is happy, fulfilled, and genuinely enjoying their life can be considered more successful than someone successful in a traditional sense but unfulfilled.
In our pursuit to find success, we have lost touch with the true meaning of success. As a society, we have the idea backward.
Most people believe that success is an external condition. It’s a matter of doing well, achieving, and attaining. In truth, this is a very materialistic perspective.
People want to be successful to achieve a feeling. They want to be fulfilled. Therefore, let’s cut out the middle man and inspect what we’re pursuing here: fulfillment.
Society’s formula for success | abundance –> success –> happiness
The spiritual formula for success | happiness –> success –> abundance
Success is a state of consciousness. It corresponds with a high-vibrational state as it’s associated with happiness, joy, gratitude, and all the positive feelings we experience.
In other words, true success is the authentic embodiment of the higher self: The person who is a little further along in their growth journey than you are.
Some people will be extremely miserable but consider themselves successful because they have achieved a particular career goal. Others will sacrifice time with their family and kids to be successful.
At some point, we need to ask ourselves what we’re chasing.
We live in a society that prioritizes quantity over quality. This has an enormous influence over how we perceive success as a collective, and why our current model is so misleading.
Success cannot be measured in assets as everyone gets different value from their assets.
Success must be measured as value. What is the value you’re getting from your life experience?
How We Measure Conventional Success
Your fulfillment must measure success. Success is not a finish line but a sensation of wholeness you can cultivate within yourself. Different people have different routes to this sense of wholeness, including:
- Providing for a family or people you care about
- Cultivating faith and meaning through spiritual practices
- Adding value to the world and other people
- Leaving a legacy that will improve other people’s lives
- Helping or creating a good cause
Success is an intrinsic movement rather than an external accomplishment. It’s something that must be found within yourself, not something that can be found elsewhere.
If you keep chasing superficial things to be successful, then you’re probably not enjoying the life right in front of your eyes.
If you sacrifice all of the good things in life to work towards some invisible end goal, then I would consider this as failing. You’re failing because you’re not enjoying your life or making the most of your time here.
Therefore, aim for fulfillment, and you will be successful. Wealth, fame, and all of these things are nice, but they’re not necessary to be fulfilled.
If you reprioritize your values and give success a deeper meaning, then you will start pursuing more worthwhile things.
Here are the conventional metrics of success and the genuine metrics of success.
Conventional metrics of success
This is how we as a society tend to view success…
- Becoming wealthy or having a good income
- Having lots of stuff
- Having a sense of power or high social status
- Being widely recognized or famous
- Being approved of or validated by others
Genuine metrics of success
This is a deeper philosophical view of success…
- Having a deep sense of fulfillment and meaning in life
- Living an adventurous, happy life
- Pursuing personal and spiritual growth
- Having plenty of human connection, friendship, and community
- Experiencing lots of gratitude, love, and compassion
Holistic Success Is a Feeling
We tend to place ridiculous expectations on future ideals by believing that success is a material condition. As soon as you get something you want, you are considered successful.
People chase money to buy the feeling. They think they can simply buy success or that a material condition will solve all of their internal problems.
But what about your trauma? What about your sense of meaning and fulfillment? Do these simply take the back seat?
What solves these internal problems are:
- Self-betterment and a desire to transform yourself
- Healing and desire to feel complete
- Actualization and a will to transform your reality
- Spiritual growth and developing meaning in your life
The old paradigm of success is dying, and it must die to make way for a more holistic view of wholeness.
As long as you associate success with material acquisition, you can be extremely successful but extremely unhappy. No matter how much you have, you won’t feel abundant as long as you hunger for more.
You’re missing the soul, which consists of:
- Joy
- Gratitude
- Compassion
- Love
- Awe
- Beauty
It’s important to look into this mentality of material acquisition to understand what you’re pursuing here. Success has been a feeling, a vibration, a state of consciousness.
If you don’t have happiness, then everything else you have becomes meaningless.
Success and Abundance: What’s the Connection?
If you feel like you already have everything you need, then crossing the finish line won’t make a difference.
Satisfaction is short-lived. Fulfillment is a deeper shining of the soul.
If you can enjoy the fruits that life provides, then you are successful. Everything else you achieve will be a bonus. You have already accomplished that sensation of success, which is to feel abundant in love and happiness.
Abundance is a state of fulfillment.
If you wish to achieve great things in life, you need to build a solid foundation that you aren’t chasing something to be happy.
You should be doing whatever you do because you genuinely enjoy doing it.
If you can’t do what you want to do due to finances, responsibilities, or life getting in the way, find a way to do it, or at least work towards a vision of doing it.
Pursue your dreams and ambitions, but remember that you are already successful as long as you do the inner work.
How to Find Holistic Success
Even though success must be cultivated internally, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go for what you want in life – the external is still part of the picture.
We do have physical bodies after all. It’s fair to say that people in extreme poverty probably won’t feel successful.
You must find a state where your basic needs are met, and preferably actualize where you can have a lot more. However, the meaning behind why you do what you do makes a world of difference.
You should be inspired by your goals and feel a sense of accomplishment solely from working on them. You should be excited to do something with your life and make the most of it.
After all, why not?
If you don’t enjoy what you’re moving toward, then you are already unsuccessful as you aren’t gaining anything from the process.
In this case, your work is not making you any happier. It’s probably doing the opposite by adding excess stress to your life and stripping you of your limited time on this planet.
But I get it. Part of life is to grind, make money, and ultimately, just make it through. However, believing in yourself to actualize any life you want – and having a drive behind it will make you feel so much better about why you’re doing what you do.
Success is a seed that you plant. If you tend to this seed, it will grow into opportunities, experiences, and abundance. But you must nurture this seed until it bears fruit.
Aim high and desire to achieve an incredible life, but realize that an incredible life is not a prerequisite to happiness.
Finding Meaning and Purpose in Life
Discover what you’re on this planet for, and go for it. If you don’t know, then you haven’t searched.
It has taken me many years exploring the world, living in different cultures, and making countless sacrifices to find why I’m on this planet – to help raise the vibration of this planet through education and healing.
This sense of meaning drives me. When I’m at my lowest, it pushes me past the hump, realizing that I can leave a footprint that others will benefit from. This is what makes me feel successful, it’s the core of who I am.
When people plan success for the sake of getting something out of it, they will fail every time.
Jokes on them; they’re going to die in 50-odd years or so.
What’s the point of gaining for oneself when your time is limited, but there is potentially an unlimited amount of future generations that will exist after you? There is a reason for a legacy.
Following through with a dream is what makes people successful because it gives their lives meaning.
This dream may be to create a project. It may be to watch your family grow old and be happy. Maybe it’s to experience everything you can in this world while you can and just have a wild experience on spiritual BootCamp Earth.
Discover meaning in your life, and you will feel successful in life.
How You Should Look At Failure
Our society condemns failure as something that must be avoided at all costs, but failure is a part of life. Accomplishment has never been achieved without enduring countless failures.
Anything you want to achieve in life requires a learning curve. As long as you are willing to fail, you allow yourself to adapt, innovate, and change.
The end goal is achieved by climbing a mountain of your failures. Each corpse of failure is a platform to reach new heights. Without failure, you wouldn’t have anything to climb.
Therefore, view life as a work in progress. A messy process. An exciting experience to learn, grow, and experience. Do not be afraid of failure because failure is a part of life. Rather, view success as an attempt to live your best possible life and do it wholeheartedly.