Thursday 5 April 2018

The art of giving up

The irony of life that as soon as you think you have things figured out, the rules change.
  • The simple rule of success is - More! Acquire more words. More food. More toys. Take more classes. Earn more degrees. Once we enter the working world the objective remains the same. Acquire knowledge. Gain experiences. Get better. Take on more. And More! 
  • Life, it would seem, is about the acquisition of more knowledge and more skill and more responsibility. And those most likely to be successful are the ones with the greatest capacity for more.
  • But then the rules of success change in the second phase of life which is about giving up. Doing less. It is about focusing on what you were meant to be doing, leveraging your greatest strengths and passions, and letting everything else fall to the side.
  • Most successful are not the ones who can do everything, they are the ones who can do something, and do it exceptionally well. It is their confidence in the few things they excel at.
  • An obsession with success can have negative side effects on what matters even more in life: being happy. Are successful people necessarily happier?
  • Kids today face tremendous pressure to succeed, but is such success worth it?
  • Most of us sacrifice our present-day enjoyment for the sake of a future that may never really arrive. Researchers interviewed people in the winter years of their life, and asked them what they would change about their past if they could re-live their lives. The study revealed that people consistently wished that they had been a little less work-oriented, a little less focused on being successful, and a little more pleasure-orientated, a little more focused on enjoying life. 
  • When looking at success over the span of an entire career, it is our willingness to give things up that matters much more than our capacity to take things on.
  • The acquisition of knowledge and experience is an extraordinary gift. But once you find it, you must summon the confidence to let other things go. You must delegate to others more talented than you. You must focus on the challenges that most excite you. This is what authentic leadership is all about.
  • Success to a point requires gaining as much knowledge and experience as you can get your hands on. But breaking out to achieve the life you are capable of living eventually requires the strength to let it go.

But even more basic than figuring out which goals to pursue and which ones to abandon, is having the clarity to accord the goal of leading a happy and fulfilling life your number one priority. Do you have it? If not, be aware that you may grow to be one of those who, like the participants in the study, regret having sacrificed enjoyment for the sake of success.

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