There are two types of success…and one of them can destroy you
You want to be successful.
But what does that mean?
Making $1,000,000 in 5 years? Marrying the person of your dreams? Climbing Mount Everest? Becoming an A-list Hollywood celebrity?
What if I told you that becoming successful could ruin your life instead of save it?
The thing is, it can — if you pursue the wrong type of success.
Type 1: Success in what you do.
There are two kinds of success. The first type is easy to define. It consists of fame, fortune, and fans, or some combination thereof. It can be measured in amount of dollars earned, awards received, competitions won, etc.
Also, attaining Type 1 Success is simple. Not easy, but simple.
All it requires is blood, sweat, and tears.
And maybe a little luck.
Cheating, lying, stealing, and cutting corners can also help you achieve this kind of success, in some cases.
But warning: this kind of success is hard to hold on to.
Sports records are broken all the time. Champions are eventually defeated by young upstarts. Businesses lure each others’ clients away with shiny innovations and more attractive deals.
And if you cheated, lied, or stole your way into Type 1 Success, your chances of losing everything is astronomically higher:
- Bernie Madoff made tons of money off his massive Ponzi Scheme…but when he was discovered, he lost a son to suicide and is now serving life in prison.
- San Lu tried to profit by selling adulterated infant formula. But when hundreds of thousands of babies got sick, several company officials were given lengthy prison sentences and even the death penalty.
- Lance Armstrong won seven Tour de Frances and innumerable fans, but he was stripped of his titles and banned from Olympic sports for life when his long-term doping offenses were discovered.
Worse, this type of success will leave you feeling empty.
Too many successful people — famous and influential artists, writers, inventors, and more — either committed suicide or died penniless, despite the fame and fortune their works brought them (Oscar Wilde, Nikola Tesla, Sammy Davis, Jr., Judy Garland, Michael Jackson, Virginia Woolf, and many, many more).
The emptiness of success is a well-documented phenomenon. And it appears the greater the success, the greater the potential of emptiness. Consider these sound bytes from “successful” people:
“I’m plagued with insecurities 24/7” –Madonna
“As I get more successful, insecurities only pile on top of one another” –Oscar Wilde
“I have self-doubt. I have insecurity. I have fear of failure.” –Kobe Bryant
And even if this type of success gives you the happiness you think you want, it may last only until retirement.
Is success always is so ephemeral, unreliable, even treacherous? Not the second type.
Type 2: Success in who you are.
The second type of success is harder to define. It’s not really quantifiable, and does not rely on fame or fortune as an outward measuring stick.
This type of success might best described as: “how far you have mastered yourself (your cowardice, selfishness, and pride), how close you are to the kind of person you are meant to be, and how deeply you have impacted other’s lives for good.”
But not only is this type of success difficult to define, it is difficult to achieve.
It isn’t just about hard work and a touch of luck. People who achieve this kind of success also must develop qualities such as humility, wisdom, integrity, and courage.
There is no way to lie, cheat, or steal your way into this type of success.
But if you do achieve it, you will not be left empty. And no one can take it from you — not a competitor, nor an accident, nor retirement.
Moreover, those who achieve Type 2 Success are far more likely to achieve Type 1 success as well:
- Desmond Doss: stuck to his conviction not to kill, becoming an oft-bullied conscientious objector. But his belief in the sanctity of life fueled an incredible one-man rescue attempt during WWII, eventually earning him the Bronze Medal and the Medal of Honor.
- Eric Liddell: believed in honoring God by refusing to race on Sundays. He ended up becoming not only a gold-medal Olympian, but a beloved and influential missionary in China.
- Joni Eareckson Tada: refused to give in to depression and self-pity after a tragic accident in her teens left her paralyzed from the neck down. Today she is a brilliant artist and founder (along with her husband) of a non-profit organization that delivers wheelchairs to needy people who cannot afford them.
Case Study: Chad Williams, former US Navy SEAL
The year Chad Williams decided to try out for the Navy SEALs, the most notoriously difficult branch of the U.S. military, he was one of 173 hopefuls. Only 13 made it.
Chad was one of the 13.
On his graduation day, though, Williams felt a strange sense of loss.
I had accomplished my “big thing.” I had reached my mountaintop, only to discover…that the view disappointed me. And there was no higher step to take…Why did I feel so disappointed? –Chad Williams
Unbeknownst to Chad, he was experiencing what Ravi Zacharias once described:
one of the loneliest moments a man will ever experience is when he has achieved that which he thought would deliver the ultimate, and in the end, it lets him down.
To fill the emptiness, Williams fell into a dangerous spiral: he indulged in drinking and partying, and became a physical danger to himself and his family.
One day, during a Greg Laurie crusade, Williams finally realized that his outward success, including becoming a SEAL, did not matter so much as the anger, pride, selfishness, and hopelessness that was rotting him from the inside out.
From that day on, Williams was a changed man. He became a humble person with integrity, refusing to go drinking, clubbing, and womanizing with his fellow SEALs — some of whom, ironically, tried to kill him for it.
But Williams stayed strong and stuck with his convictions. He served as a SEAL in the Middle East, then retired in order to write and speak, leaving behind the prestige of SEAL-dom to write a memoir and teach others the lessons he’d learned and the hope he had found.
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Why do you want success?
For most of us, it’s not the success itself that we want. It’s the happiness and meaning that we think comes with success.
But these gems only come with one type of success: success in who you are.
Writer, neuropsychiatrist, and holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl once said:
Don’t aim at success. The more you aim at it, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself.
In other words, whether you desire to earn millions or become a Navy SEAL, if that is ALL you focus on, you will find yourself disappointed after hitting that goal.
That’s partly why rich men are driven to make more money (no matter how much they already have), and athletes are driven to keep making and breaking records.
Type 1 success, on its own, always leads to dissatisfaction. And that frustration and dissatisfaction leads to dissipation, despair, even death.
Think of it this way: no matter how beautiful a jewelry box is, it’s really only valuable because of the jewel it contains.
You are the jewel. What you do is the box.
So work on you, not the box.
Conclusion
Pursue success in your endeavors, by all means. Part of life’s fun is setting goals and achieving them.
Just don’t put the cart before the horse. No award can make up for who you are. And, in fact, who you are can and will get you the greatest reward of all — a well-lived life.
So invest in yourself. Learn to master your faults and build up your strengths. Do all within your power to become the person you are meant to be:
A blessing to your family and friends, a helper of the helpless, an encourager of the discouraged, an inspiration to all who meet you, a world changer.
Then you will be your biggest accomplishment.
In this area, more than anything else:
I wish you success.
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