“The pursuit of success can be a catalyst for failure. Put another way, success can distract us from focusing on the essential things that produce success in the first place.”
Greg McKeown, Essentialism (Page 13)
“Ambition is tying your well-being to what other people do and say… sanity is tying it to your own actions.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“Happiness and fulfillment come only from mastering the mind and connecting with the soul–not from objects or attainments. Success doesn’t guarantee happiness, and happiness doesn’t require success. They can feed each other, and we can have them at the same time, but they are not intertwined.”
Jay Shetty, Think Like A Monk (Page 69)
“Don’t be distracted by anything. The work is what counts. There are a lot of things that can get in your way, that take up your time and your emotional and intellectual energy; none of them account for anything. They mean nothing. The only thing, in the final analysis, at this stage of the game, that really counts, is the work. The work is everything. The years that I spent in advertising I saw an awful lot of people who had the potential to be good lose a lot of their ability to distraction, to politics, to fear, and to who has the bigger office. You’ll get the bigger office; you’ll make the money. Anything you want will happen, but sometimes it’s hard for people to see that when they’re in the middle of it. It looks like it’s incredibly complicated. Well, it’s not complicated at all. In fact, it’s so uncomplicated it’s amazing. All it is about is the work. Finally, if you do the work people will notice and you will get what you want. That’s it. It’s as simple as that.”
Tom McElligott
“If it makes you a worse person (parent, neighbor, writer, whatever), it’s not success. If starting a business makes you a worse person—if it stresses you out, if it tears your relationships apart, if it makes you bitter or frustrated with people—then it doesn’t matter how much money it makes or external praise it receives. It’s not successful.”
Ryan Holiday
“If I lived only for the major, newsworthy milestones, I’d be miserable. Instead, I focused on small wins and created an alternative way to measure success and happiness: know what you’re good at and what you like doing, and spend as much of your workday doing exactly that.”
Aytekin Tank, Automate Your Busywork (Page 168)
“Our definitions of ‘success’ are maybe the most common way we torture ourselves with arbitrary standards and made-up problems. It’s one reason I advise people to be careful and hold their goals lightly—because while goals may motivate you in the short run, a poorly defined version of success can really make you suffer in the long run.”
Mark Manson