This is why success doesn't feel like you thought

Everybody wants the same three things. Happiness, love, and money. And most people carry the same sentence around about them: if I could only have that, I would be happy. That sentence is wrong, and the day you see why is the day success stops confusing you.

Think about a holiday. It is ten days out and you are all amped up. You are going to Hawaii, or Spain, or the Maldives, and the anticipation has you pumped, jazzed, excited. Then you get in the car, and an hour in somebody says it: are we there yet? You see where I am going? The happiness was never the destination. It is the ride toward something. It is the road. It is the creation of building something.

The house that answered: so?

I just built a house in Italy. Stunning. Big mountains behind it, the beach right there, Roman statues all over the place. And there was such joy in building it, in a foreign language, with foreign laws and foreign everything. I thought I was going to lose my mind, but I got through it. It was the joy of creating. Then it got done, and I swear to you, the honest reaction was: so? The house did not stop being beautiful. The feeling I was chasing lived in the building of it, not in the finished thing.

A dear friend of mine, a great guy in his thirties, just built his dream house with his wife right on the beach in Florida. He called me, and I could tell something was sitting on his mind. Finally he said it: Tom, it is anticlimactic. I built the house, I am in it, and where is the big moment? I feel stupid. I told him, I get it, brother. The joy was on the trip there.

So here is the rule, and if you come away with just one thing, this would be a good one. When you hit your goal, the very first thing you do is go get another one. Make it bigger than the last one.

The guy in the mirror decides

Somebody asked me, how do you know if it is the right goal? Remember the guy in the mirror. He is the only opinion that matters. It is your life. Not mine, not theirs. Yours. You can have twenty goals. A goal for your body, an education, money, a business of your own. Live your life and stop worrying about what anyone else thinks of it.

Then someone asked, can we be wrong about a goal? Of course. There is this beautiful thing called changing your mind. Maybe you always dreamed of a certain neighborhood, ever since your dad drove you through it on the way to school. Then you finally get in there and the place stinks. I have news for you. Move. Notice what actually happened: the happiness came from getting there. You did it. The address was never the prize.

People love the word freedom, so let me tell you what it actually is. Are you allowing yourself to control your own thoughts? Are you setting your own direction in life? Are you doing the things that move you toward it? That is freedom. Nobody can take it from you. You have to give it away. A lot of sadness is just the moment you realize you gave it away. Hang onto it.

Dreams are how you measure alive

Wise people have written the same idea for ages: when a person runs out of dreams, they have run out of life. How alive you are is measured by how many dreams you have and how much effort you are putting in to make them come true. You want something, you figure out how to get it, and you start moving. That is being alive.

I have watched people swear they would love to come hear a talk, get all pumped up about it, and never show up. There is a part of them that cannot get out of bed, and I do not mean the body. Use it to take your own pulse, and use it on the people around you too. Can they make things happen? Positive things? That tells you plenty.

The list that gets you back in gear

Now the hard part, because life will hit you. I know what mine felt like. One of the people who stabbed me in the back had the same mom and dad as I do. What took me six years to build was gone in about four months. Completely bankrupt. Gone. The fear, the sadness, the falling feeling, and then you hit. It is brutal. And I have never met a person who did not have some version of that story.

Here is what I learned. It is not how high you went, how far you fell, or how hard you hit. It is how long it took you to dust yourself off, get back up, say that stunk, and get on with it. Because only I can give up. Only you can give up. Nobody can do it for you.

So if you feel stuck, if you cannot get the shifter into first gear no matter what you try, sit down with a piece of paper. List out your own catastrophes, and next to each one, write down what you were going for, because behind every one of them is a goal that got blocked. Then ask if that dream is still true for you. Some you can rehabilitate. You always wanted it, then the kids came, and now the kids are twelve or fifteen and can spare you a few hours, so go handle your dream. Some you look at and say, that one is done, and I am fine with that. Then make new ones. The only limit is your imagination, and whatever you can think of, you have the ability to do. That wild and crazy part of you is the entrepreneurial spirit itself. Let it out to play as often as you can.