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To be successful part 2

As I wrote last time, for me, suc­cess is all about being able to achieve a del­i­cate bal­ance between:

  • short and long term income;
  • per­son­al time;
  • time for those you love;
  • the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of your busi­ness activity;
  • your con­tri­bu­tion to life.


In the first part of this arti­cle explored the first 3 and on this part I will wrap up the last two and a conclusion. 

The Sustainability of your business activity

In our mod­ern times we have grown and exploit­ed with­out much car about the world. There was lit­tle con­sid­er­a­tion about the impact that open min­ing would have, that frack­ing has, that pol­lut­ing rivers and water, etc… But even the def­i­n­i­tion of sus­tain­able has been some­thing that has been hard to pin down. 

Sus­tain­able, in my view, is about being able to do a few things: clear­ly be ben­e­fi­cial to life as a whole, so avoid destroy­ing nature; but also it is about hav­ing a macro focus that will not just be spent in the very short term; and final­ly it is about build­ing the struc­tures to allow the busi­ness to last. This can be in the form of resources, peo­ple, busi­ness mod­el, everything. 

This week I watched a real­ly inspir­ing video, if you have a chance watch this trail­er and look out for the full movie.

Your contribution to life

This is the last but arguably the most impor­tant aspect. The busi­ness you chose to do, your voca­tion, your pas­sion, can have a lot of facets. I am a mem­ber of the team behind a com­pa­ny called FairRent.NYC This com­pa­ny is focused on help­ing NY Ten­ants get bet­ter deals with land­lords. Yet, built into the busi­ness is a 10% share of rev­enue that is going into NYC home­less hous­ing. I have a strong opin­ion that what you do should be also hav­ing this macro vision and real­ly try­ing to tie the busi­ness into con­tribut­ing to our soci­ety and life. 

OK!

So all this was inspired by some­one talk­ing about suc­cess and how the nar­row focus on finances can make peo­ple blind­ed to the ele­ments that will ful­fill your life. So let me take a moment to reflect and conclude.

Suc­cess, in my point of view, comes from hav­ing accom­plished goals in many areas of life, finances, per­son­al life, invest­ing in those peo­ple we love, in the sus­tain­abil­i­ty and future of your activ­i­ty and the con­tri­bu­tion that you make to life itself. 

Clear­ly these are lofty goals and require a ton of foun­da­tion to hap­pen, for exam­ple, dis­ci­pline, con­sis­ten­cy, stub­born­ness, social skills, lead­er­ship, sense of humor…. 

But in this arti­cle I real­ly want­ed to help you to ques­tion a lit­tle your view of suc­cess and start to take a broad­er look at what you want to accom­plish as well as how you are going to accom­plish it! 

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