How to Succeed with Savviness

Hello again!

Another blog post in my series: Conquer the Controllable with Savviness, Moxie, and Mettle. This post will focus on Savviness (how to succeed with savviness), and how Savviness is critical in our pursuit of success.

What is Success?

Good question! I equate success to true accomplishment, defined as: the inner satisfaction of one's thoughts and actions in pursuit of continuous growth. As I've mentioned before, true success isn't finite. No single victory, no one accomplishment, will instill a sense of lasting success. Instead, success is a mindset, an inner, continuous recognition (satisfaction) of your own thoughts and actions that have driven growth throughout life.

A good example of our inaccurate perception of success is found with those who have won the lottery. I'm talking large scale winners: Mega Millions and Power Ball. What a dream, right? You just won hundreds of millions of dollars, maybe a billion. You have financial freedom. You can buy houses, cars, boats, status, influence, and so on. You can support any cause near and dear to your heart. You can gift significant cash to family and friends. It might surprise you, then, that 33% of lottery winners go broke within 3-5 years, and even more report increased depression. Very rarely is any of that wealth passed on to the next generation.

I reference this reality because we often associate success with the good ole American dollar. Therefore, getting rich quickly and without much effort is the American Dream. The lottery statistic demonstrates the American Dream is not the path to success, or happiness. It can absolutely be a means for both, but it isn't the foundation. Suddenly possessing large amounts of cash is single point on a scale, not the end of the scale.

Success as a Scale:

It's important to first change our mindset of success. We HAVE to cast off what the world tells us about success. The houses, cars, boats, number of followers, power, status, and so on, and how we can acquire them as quickly as possible with as minimal effort as possible. Status, power, money, and material items are not evil in of themselves, but we go astray when they are viewed as the epitome of our life's success.

Instead, success, inner satisfaction and happiness, is long term. More specifically, it is growth over the long term. This is why so many lottery winners fall into bankruptcy and depression. Their mindset is anchored in the short term - focused on the world around us, neglecting the long term vision of how they might utilize the money to personally grow over decades of times. A sudden influx of cash should be viewed as 'how can these resources assist in my growth' instead of 'how many things can I surround myself with'.

Example: You have a passion for writing (and are pretty good at it), but you have never had the time or money to pursue a career in writing (blogs, books, reviews, media outlets, screenplays, etc...). Suddenly winning the lottery would allow you the means to quit your day job, acquire a writing degree, attend writing seminars around the country, and even self-publish a novel if desired. The cash from the lottery, here, is used to fuel growth in a passion. That growth is what makes you feel alive, accomplished, and satisfied. It sticks with us because it is within us. Using the cash from a lottery, and all your time, to shop houses, cars, and other material items will fade because they are without. They can be destroyed, taken, damaged, or lost. But that sense of personal growth, that satisfaction within us can never be taken away.

This example can be applied to every human that walks this earth, with or without the lottery. Considering the resources you possess, are they utilized in pursuit of personal growth, or are they acquired and immediately spent on items around us? That empty feeling many of us possess, even if we have big houses, multiple cars, retirements accounts, and so on is the result of more time, effort, and money being spent on the world around us instead of ourselves (and not material items for ourselves, but growth through personal development pertaining to a passion, skillset, or cause).

Again, material items are not evil. I admit that I would absolutely splurge on an item or two, probably more, if I won the lottery or suddenly came into unexpected volumes of cash. However, the foundation of what leads to accomplishment and success cannot be forgotten or deprioritized. If it does, then we become hallow, depressed, and feel as if we have lost our way.

This scale, this mindset, exists from childhood to the day we die. As young adults, professionals, and even in retirement. We must never forget that inner growth is what satisfies us the most. We all have heard stories about how retirement negatively impacts individuals. Retirees can suddenly become complacent, bored, posses a feeling of without purpose. This is because they have lost their drive for growth. They suddenly no longer have a work routine and fail to identify an alternate passion to surround their time, money, and effort with. The drive for growth is what fuels us - you take away that flame and we fail to be alive.

Savviness

So, how does Savviness play into our pursuit of success?

Definitions are imperative reference points, so Savviness is defined as: shrewdness and practical knowledge; the ability to make good judgments.

Therefore, Savviness is imperative from the start. We must identify and acknowledge that most of our mindsets around success is wrong. We will not feel successful through being handed loads of cash that we then spend on material items until we fall into bankruptcy. Instead, we must understand that success is a continuous journey - that some days we will feel accomplished and others not so much. We must understand that growth over the long term leads to a foundation of a sustained, inner sense of accomplishment and success.

The idea is much like the stock market. Warren Buffet has become one of the wealthiest individuals in the world. His success was not made over night. Instead, he played the long game. He slowly, meticulously sought undervalued companies and invested in them (Savviness in prioritizing long term over near term, and in strategic investments over that span of time). He then held their stocks for years, decades even, and then cashed them out when he believed the stock was near or at its peak. His fortune is 50+ years in the making. Day traders, on the other hand, focus on the near term. There are professionals who make a comfortable living upon this betting platform, but nearly every novice eventually losses their money (even though they will not admit it). In a casino metaphor - Warren Buffet is the House while day traders are gambling at the slot machines.

I will explore utilizing Savviness after our mindset has shifted into a focus of growth over long term in additional posts.

Concluding Thoughts

1. How do you view success? Is it by the house you live, what car you drive, how many followers you have on social media?

   1. If so, those things are not inherently bad. Living comfortably and providing for your family are admirable qualities - but how satisfying are they if you are empty on the inside, depressed, have thoughts of suicide, constantly fight with your spouse, or never see your kids?

2. Instead, realize feeling alive, possessing a sense of accomplishment and success comes from within. Imagine building something with your own hands, your mind, and bringing it to life. Even if you fail, the venture fails, hold on to what you learned. Even failure can birth a sense of success if you focus on the skillsets you developed throughout the process, and/or grab the failure by the horns and apply lessons learned to future growth opportunities.

   1. We all love a comeback story for reason. Someone fails at something, regroups and goes at it again to find success. There are countless books and movies that cover this, or similar, theme.

3. In summary, the pursuit of personal growth will allow us to feel alive. That feeling will then feed into a desire for additional growth - an endless circle of what keeps us marching forward. The pursuit of growth must remain throughout our entire lives. A feeling of success will come at various points throughout that pursuit. There will be hundreds of dots along a rather stable scale, allowing us a sense of continuous success. In contract, the lottery example is a wavy line with a single high point (winning the lottery) and a massive drop off that will leave us feeling void and insignificant.