Author’s Note: This is the final post in my 12 Great Commandments series, inspired by Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project.
Success is often compared to climbing a ladder, moving up the levels of life one rung at a time. This analogy makes sense if we associate success with something like money. It’s easy to compare salaries and bank accounts, easy to group people into ladder-rungs: the high-rollers, the middle class, the lower class.
But to most of us, success means much more than being rich.
We also measure success in terms of happiness. In saving lives or changing the world. In lessons learned, skills mastered, in love given and received. Success means achieving our personal, physical, and emotional goals, even if those goals don’t make us (financially) rich.
For several important reasons, I believe that success is less like climbing a ladder and more like learning to stretch.
As we go into this new year, this is my wish, for myself and for you; this is the final commandment:
Stretch.
Diverse Interests and Your One True Calling
One of the problems with the ladder idea of success is that we feel pressured to find and pursue our one true calling. Pick a ladder, stick to it, get as high up as you can. You can only have one priority. Jumping between ladders just wastes time and energy.
I know this this feeling. For much of my life, I envied those people who seemed to know exactly what they were built to do. The lifelong entrepreneurs, the child prodigy musicians …
But as Jonathan Fields rightly points out, most of us have trouble confining ourselves to a single interest or goal. We are creatures of diverse interests; trying to pick one path to the exclusion of all others feels suffocating.
You may disagree. If you know your one true calling, by all means, pursue it. There is a case for specialization, and we all specialize to some extent – but at the same time we yearn to do many different things. It’s no accident that actors want to be politicians, politicians want to be CEOs, CEOs want to be authors, and everyone wants to be a rock star.
And no matter who we are and what we believe our true calling to be, we are all interested in building relationships, finding meaning, trying new things, leaving a legacy. These are all worthwhile, diverse goals.
***
To succeed, then, is not a question of climbing one ladder as high as possible, but of learning to stretch our horizons in different directions, to learn and grow, to fail in some pursuits and excel in others.
It is learning to push further, to enjoy the struggle and the reward, to experiment constantly, to never be complacent, to ask questions and listen for the answers, to never grow old.
It is learning to build, and tear down, and build again, to explore and dream, to find fierceness and gentleness in the same moment.
It is learning to be wrong and – more importantly – learning to be right; it is to go forward with passion, to build ourselves up, to build each other up, to meet and greet and love.
It is learning that who we are and who we want to be are not that far apart after all, that in stretching ourselves we become the incarnation of our dreams. It is learning our limits, and then un-learning them.
And learning to have fun doing it.
Life is beautiful. Reach for it.
Stretch.
10 Comments on “Stretch.”
says:
As usual good stuff Jeffery, I am a big advocate of stretching. As we push our boundaries and ideas farther then they are willing to go we see new opportunities and new definitions of successes. As we stretch our selves we become better able to relate to others because our expanded set of experiences help us understand were more people are coming from. When we have an idea were others are coming from we are more excepting of them and less hostile to there point of views. So stretch to find happiness and stretch to make the world a better place.
says:
Jeffrey congratulations on this amazing article. What you talk about is exactly what all of us have forgotten and need to understand and learn in some respects. I can't think of a better example where this applies than to scientists. Most of the time, they are one of the worst paid people but love their jobs since they are able to easily switch between a topic of interest within their field.
I guess their choice is limited, that is to within their own field but they at least are free to switch what they are doing/researching.
says:
Thank you, Jeffrey, for letting me know I'm not alone. I figured everyone but me was on that single ladder climbing higher and higher – pursuing their one true calling – while I was the lone wingnut attempting to pursue multiple interests. A lot of literature about business, marketing, (Hell, just surviving) says “pick a niche,” “do just that one thing,” “specialize….” And it never jived with me. Sure, I tried (15 years with one company), but I've come to realize in myself a sort of modern Renaissance Man (not that what I do remotely compares to the likes of, say, daVinci); I'm just a guy with a diverse spread of interests.
Despite my knowing that specialization and nichedom isn't really for me, I believed I should and so I pigeon-holed myself into a life I've grown to detest, just because the other lemmings are doing it. I've tried to be a good lemming. And I suck at it. I have wings. I'm not a lemming at all. Whoops.
Thank you for your advice – stretch. I'm going to have a really great stretch.
says:
That's something I hadn't thought much about – how stretching our boundaries also helps us understand how the people around us think and work and function. That's a great point!
says:
I read a study which said that the freedom to switch topics within jobs or switch to a different job entirely is one of the most important things to Gen Y employees, while money wasn't nearly as big of a concern.
A colleague of mine left a high-paying job last year in favor of a job with a smaller startup, simply because that startup offered a much better work environment and room for growth. Just goes to show that the feeling of being able to stretch your limits is often worth much more than money.
says:
Andrew – thank you so much for commenting. I know exactly how you feel! I have so many different interests, and while I'm fairly good at many different things, I'm not outrageously talented in any particular one. That was frustrating to me for a long time; I envied people who had one spectacular talent to guide their lives.
But in the last few years, I've realized that even people with one spectacular talent have a desire to stretch themselves into other fields and interests. Often, their talent in one area actually makes it harder for them to find opportunities to pursue other paths.
“I've tried to be a good lemming. And I suck at it. I have wings. I'm not a lemming at all.” Fantastic image. I love it.
Here's to the Renaissance Men and Women among us, and to people who have the courage to push the boundaries in many different directions at once!
says:
Stretch… I like that concept. If something seems too hard (for me it would be writing a novel), then you're probably on the right track for doing something great.
says:
Hey Jeffrey,
It is funny how we all seem to be trying to do the same thing. I've been trying to setup a blog and really find my particular calling and niche and find what it is exactly I am passionate about. Day after day I think to myself what do I love to do and for some reason there is no one thing that completely satisfies me I don't think.
I think my true calling in life is to learn how to settle my mind, stay fit and healthy, eat well and as you put it, stretch and not only in the literal sense.
It looks like you have quite the inspirational site. Thanks for a great a post.
says:
Hi Jeffrey – Stretch. What a beautiful way to define success. Your writing is so eloquent here, and I'm really loving it. I don't personally subscribe to the “one true calling” mantra, because I think human beings are much more complicated than that, a series of life long inner transitions. Layers and layers of depth to discover. And when you talk about climbing that ladder, I'm reminded of a Joseph Campbell quote: “He's gotten to the top of the ladder, and found it's against the wrong wall.” Not so much danger of that if, as you say, we substitute experimenting, learning, growing, struggling, exploring, dreaming, building, and tearing down for that old rickety ladder.
says:
Jeffrey thanks for this. Since I always have been interested in so many fields the concept of stretching myself in lots of them, expanding myself through experiences is much better suited to experience true joy and happiness.
I too sometimes envied those who had their one goal and followed it to the exclusion of everything else, but I soon realized that this was not me, not my way of living.
And since I am a gemini, being a multiple interest type of person is birth given :-)