I’ve chased success my entire life.
Success is all I thought about. As soon as I opened my eyes in the morning, throughout my daily life, before I went to bed, and even in my dreams.
I was obsessed.
It captured my imagination, focus, energy and every ounce of who I was.
As an immigrant from Nepal, I came to America with my Mom and Dad at 18 months old.
We of course, like most immigrant families, came for the American dream.
And like most immigrants we came with nothing — just $1,000 in our pocket.
And so with a chip on my shoulder as an immigrant, I wanted more for myself, for my family and to alter my family tree so drastically for generations to come. Something that they call “generational wealth”.
However, through my failures and successes in life, study of success and my deep meditation practice of just letting go of everything, I came to the realization that you must attract success and not chase it.
For if you chase it, it will elude you.
After listening to Viktor Frankl’s legendary book, Man’s Search For Meaning, on audible, I came upon his following message,
Don’t aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, 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 or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.
This shook me when I read it for the first time.
I literally had goosebumps climbing up my arms.
It was that powerful.
The reason was because it had crystalized my thoughts that you must attract success not chase it and at the same time it had challenged my lifelong belief that success and happiness were goals that you chased like a mad man or a sniper.
But hearing Frankl’s words completely caused a paradigm shift in my core beliefs that I’ve held since I was a young boy.
I was thankful to receive this message, yet it made me think about my beliefs, experiences, and memories of the struggles I endured pursuing success.
As a type A alpha male with an obsessive personality, when I want something, I will get it.
I will stop at nothing to achieve that thing.
I almost always get what I want, but when I don’t, I become even more obsessed, hustle harder or become angry, confrontational, combative, depressed and then move on to the next closest thing to become obsessed about.
That was me in my earlier years.
As a more mature man now at 31, having lived more life, gotten engaged, and became a Father, I have become much more calm, at peace, and am now seeing the bigger picture of life and of what is most important.
Family, happiness and creating value into the world through my passions are the three most important things for me at this time.
Interestingly, however, success is still something I want. In fact, I want it now more than ever.
However, the difference is that I have chosen to let go of how I have pictured success in my mind to come.
I have released nearly all of my expectations of any situations. I will allow it to unfold in whatever way it will. Accepting it’s various manifestations and being open to clues and hints that I will be given along the way to lean in and follow the call to act.
I have instead chosen to not focus on the end goal but to give myself to my higher purpose in life that is greater than myself.
This purpose is to help create a future where the majority of people find and do the work that sets their soul on fire, to go out and achieve more, be more, dream more, give more and help more.
I understand this will take time and requires me to have long term thinking, for this is what Gary Vaynerchuck calls, “playing the long game.”
Frankl echoes my thoughts when he says,
I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run — in the long-run, I say! — success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it.
In my younger years, I was desperate for success and one of my favorite authors, Henry David Thoreau, explains this to be common in, Walden, when he wrote,
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation
I have chosen to not be a part of the mass of men living in quiet desperation.
Instead, I have decided to live in harmony, peace and happiness in working on my higher purpose and doing what I love to do every single day of my life. I encourage you to do the same.
Be the person you want to become. For you are that man or woman already.
You simply need to open yourself to yourself and discover the magic inside you.
But just know, this will take time. It is, after all, a work in progress. Fall in love with the journey and as, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, teaches,
Have compassion to one self and to others. True compassion is not just an emotional response but a firm commitment founded on reason. Therefore, a truly compassionate attitude towards others does not change even if they behave negatively.
So, have compassion, love and patience with yourself as this will be a long and challenging journey.
But in the end, it will all be worth it.
And always remember — success cannot be pursued it must ensue.
Here’s to our success.
Love,
Sonam
