WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO BE SUCCESSFUL?

Are you feeling successful? 

When I was younger, I learned that loss and being successful went hand and hand. I learned that you have to give up your health and time with family and friends to climb the ladder of respect and acknowledgment. I learned that I could wait, but my career couldn't. I was wrong. So very wrong. If I could have a chat with my younger self I would say that my career would always be there, that I could keep reinventing myself and building on my experiences, learn new skills and make new choices about how I make a difference in the world.

Being successful is not something we do or achieve; it's something we feel.

It's easy to get distracted by achievements, it's easy to get caught up in the titles and growth trajectory that society and work-culture has used against us for so many years. The culture of who wins instead of the culture of team, which ask the question: how do we win together?

When I was six years old, I was chosen for the competitive gymnastics team in Denmark. Even at such a young age, it was downright intense. Training sessions involved 15 minutes of running to warm up, 30 minutes of stretching and calisthenics to strengthen our bodies, then practicing gymnastic jumps and movements that we would carry out during the competition before finishing with a solid stretching session to wind down.

On top of this, we performed the entire two‐and‐a‐half hour session without much talking. Our trainer wanted us to avoid getting distracted by chatter. If we took a week off, we were told it would take us two weeks to get back into shape. It was like a boot camp for kids.

Why am I telling you the details of how we spent the time? Because peak performance is rooted in the preparation and the practice. In our training, we spent just as much time getting our bodies and minds ready as we did in practicing the jumps. Being in competition‐type shape meant the continued process of getting stronger and more flexible while developing a focused mindset, but it was not the only aspect that made us strong. 

Looking back, it was a good way to grow up because I learned that winning was something we did together.

working harder or working better?

We see companies issue rewards to the highest achievers, the best score, or those who bring in the highest amount of revenue. It's a hustle environment, which often becomes a toxic competition against each other as opposed to a team‐focused effort on growth. We hear stories of peak performers who can handle more and get a lot done, and it's easy to think that's what we have to do as well. After all, performance has long been stuck in the principle of doing more and achieving more.

This focus on results over process tends to mean long hours, a race against time, and the abandonment of self‐care to save time. We see this in start‐ups, entrepreneurs, and young people who are starting their careers with the ambition to excel and climb the corporate ladder. It also shows up during times of product launches, crises, transitions, and mergers. It's a hustle culture where people burn out instead of growing and thriving because the underlying mindset is that we need to just keep going until we achieve our results and reach success—no matter what we do to get there.

You probably know the inner dialog that comes along with focusing on results—“I'm not doing enough!” “I'm not working enough!” “I'll miss something important if I ease up!” It can quickly become a constant state of being overwhelmed in an effort to reach your goals. The problem is this approach is a never‐ending race for more instead of better—which is the exact opposite of top athletes who focus on the process of getting better instead of doing more. They use rest and recovery to support the effectiveness of putting in the reps.

This mindset of more, more, more, and never being, doing, or having enough is costing us our mental health. We see this everywhere. Even athletes are speaking up about what happens when they lose their joy due to the demands and pressures put on them. We need to get back to the point where joy is found in striving for our peak performance and not just in striving to reach the results others expect of us, hoping that joy will follow. Striving to reach results because it matters to us as a team.

And NOT at the expense of our health but rather because of our well-being. At the end of the day, reaching our goals and being respected and acknowledged is part of the human relationship we have with others, starting with the one we have with ourselves. But this is the paradox; we cannot separate our relationship with self from the one we have with others and with work. Feeling successful is a daily process of working together to create, fulfill, and achieve something that matters, ––together.

We don't self-care alone; we self-care together.

(The Self-Care Mindset book explores how we rethink self-care at work and why we must recognize the importance of our three core relationships (self, others, and work) being nourished in our daily lives.)