The Paradox of Success

What would happen if we could decide to do only one thing? that action that brings the greatest contribution not only to our lives, but to the lives of other people.

Many successful people have asked themselves the same question without finding the answer so easily. One of the reasons is that in our society we are punished for good behavior (Saying no) and rewarded for bad behavior (Saying yes to everything). This type of behavior means that the person who says "No" feels bad and saying "Yes" is celebrated at that moment of time without thinking about the repercussions that this response may have in the future.

This leads to the Paradox of Success, described by Greg Mckeown author of the book "Essentialism, The Disciplined Pursuit of Less" as follows:

Phase 1: When you really have clarity of purpose, this leads to success in our goals

Phase 2: When we succeed, we gain a reputation as a person with whom other people can go, that is, we become "Good at [Add title]", who is always there when you need it, and also presents options and opportunities.

Phase 3: When we have options and opportunities, which is a code for demands on time and energy, it leads to diffuse efforts. That is, every time we have more responsibilities and less time.

Phase 4: And having less time, it is easy to get distracted by non-essential things, which disperse us from what can be our greatest contribution. The effect of our success has broken the clarity that led us to our success in the first place.

Interestingly, the search for success can be a catalyst for failure. From another perspective, success can distract us from focusing on essential things.

There are 3 deep assumptions that we must master in order to prevent this from happening: "I have to", "Everything is important" and "I can do everything" All these assumptions are as dangerous as seductive. In order to change this paradigm, we need to replace these false assumptions with three truths: "I choose" "Only some things matter" and "I can do anything, but not all things" These truths free us in our search for what really matters. They allow us to find our highest level of contribution for ourselves and the people around us.

The sad reality is that we live in a world where almost everything is unnecessary, and only some things are exceptionally valuable.

We must have the ability to discern from the non-essential and focus only on what is purely important to us, when we think of elite athletes, and we wonder how they have been able to reach that level, the truth is that they have made difficult decisions in their lives, as described in an article published by David Sedaris in the New Yorker.

Imagine you have a four-burner stove, one of them represents your family, one of them your friends, the third is your health and the fourth is your job, in order to be successful you must eliminate one, and in order to be really successful you must eliminate two, in order to reach an Elite level, someone of world class, it is necessary to focus on only one.

Model representing All things vs. Less but better by Greg Mckeown

This does not mean that you should forget your family or friends, otherwise it depends on the level you want to reach, you must be aware that it will require greater sacrifices and more accurate decision making that will lead us to our goal.

That is why the importance of knowing how to recognize the essentials of the trivial, get out of this world full of noise and really take charge of our priorities, because if you do not, someone else will decide for you.

Note: In order to understand and expand this topic further, I recommend reading the book "Essentialism, The Disciplined Pursuit of Less" by Greg Mckeown.