The Success Traps

Source: Jametlene Reskp/Unsplash

As a psychiatrist, I have the privilege of sitting front row in people’s lives. They share with me their hopes, wishes, and aspirations. A common theme I hear is the drive to be successful in pursuit of happiness.

Odds are you followed a similar pathway. You set your sights on a professional goal such as earning a degree, building a business, or climbing the corporate ladder, believing it would ultimately make you happier.

The same holds true for your personal life. You might have sought happiness in status symbols that represent success such as living in an affluent neighborhood, buying a lake house, or driving a fancy car.

Regardless of the goal, the formula is predictable. You spent a significant amount of effort, time, and money to become successful believing it would lead to a more satisfying life.

As you reflect on your individual accomplishments, ask yourself the following question: “How much has success contributed to my overall happiness?”

Perhaps, you are one of the lucky few who stumbled onto happiness following this path. Truth is many accomplished people are deeply dissatisfied and suffer greatly behind a façade of achievements. They yearn for more out of life but don’t know how to proceed.

Their lives teach us a valuable lesson. Success does not equal happiness.

Making your happiness dependent on achievement comes with hidden traps. The first is you cannot know what something is like until you fully immerse yourself in that experience. It is only through immersion that you can see behind the curtain and fully comprehend what you were pursuing in the first place.

As a personal example, I could never comprehend what being a physician entailed until I became one. Hours of volunteering at the local emergency department and shadowing doctors could not prepare me for the grind of working 30-hour shifts during my residency training, taking day-long exams or the aggravation of navigating a fragmented, disjointed health care system. I had to become a physician to fully comprehend the joys and frustrations of medicine.

The second trap is you cannot know how you will define success or happiness in the future. Human beings are dynamic. Your future values, beliefs and desires may be completely different than your current ones. This means that you may be currently on a path that is not aligned with your future self.

Think about how often this happens in relationships. Two people enter a relationship believing they are a great match. Give it a decade (or often much less time) and they no longer feel compatible. One reason is because they have evolved into different people with a different set of values, perspectives and preferences.

The third trap is the tendency to idealize success and minimize its negative impact on different parts of your life. The pursuit of success can take a toll on your health, relationships and even your ability to fully experience life.

As a personal example, my studies to become a psychiatrist included four years of medical school followed by four years of residency training. I spent the majority of my 20s hunched over a book at a library rather than backpacking to different parts of the world. Despite my best efforts, I can never make up for the lost time.

Pointing out the traps associated with success is not intended to discourage you from pursuing your individual goals. The intention is to help you have a healthy relationship with achievement by not making your happiness completely dependent on it.

Here are five tips to help you attain this:

1. Remain balanced

As an achiever, the temptation is to zoom in on your individual goals and neglect everything else. Sacrificing your health and loved ones at the altar of achievement is a grave mistake.

Invest in your health and relationships while you pursue your individual goals. Success is a shallow outcome if you have nobody to share it with or if you are not healthy enough to enjoy it.

Happiness Essential Reads

Why Thinking About the Future Makes Your Life Better Now

What If You Didn’t Need to Feel Better to Live Better?

2. Recalibrate expectations

Do not equate success with happiness. Success comes with its fair share of challenges such as increased responsibilities, a loss of freedom and being under greater scrutiny.

It is not always sunny with clear blue skies when you make it to the top of your mountain. There will be plenty of overcast days with strong winds and heavy rain.

3. Shift your success meter

Achievers tend to have a narrow definition of success that is outcome-focused. As a result, they fail to recognize the important benefits associated with the process of setting and attaining goals.

One such benefit is self-discovery. Going through adversity reveals valuable information about who you are.

An additional benefit is personal growth. Pursuing any goal will help you cultivate new skills and abilities that you did not previously possess.

The true reason to pursue a particular goal is not necessarily to attain that single goal but to evolve into a person who is capable of overcoming adversity during the pursuit of any goal.

4. Be more present

When pursuing any goal, it is tempting to look ahead at the destination and ignore the journey leading to it. This is the equivalent of going on a long hike and being so preoccupied with making it to the finish line that you ignore the sights and sounds along the way.

Take a moment to appreciate how much progress you have made on your journey regardless of where you are. If you are in graduate school, appreciate the achievement of being there in the first place. If you have a stable job and are providing for loved ones, acknowledge a job well done.

5. Practice humility

Success can feel intoxicating when it comes with recognition and praise. It can make you feel special as if you stand apart from the crowd.

Truth is every single one of us is a mosaic of strengths and weaknesses. Practicing humility can protect you from oscillating between the highs of success and lows of inevitable failure.