28,667 Days of Your Life Summed Up in 4 Words

If you have the good fortune of being born into a first-world country with ample resources to satisfy your basic physiological (food, shelter, and clothing) and safety needs, then you have an average life expectancy of roughly 78.54 trips around the sun.   

In days, that translates to 28,677 unique 24-hour windows to build a life that you enjoy, that you are proud of, and that means something to you.  

The majority of your youth was likely spent learning through formal education, socializing with your peer group and gradually discovering your innate talents in addition to the specific set of learned skills you were acquiring along the way.  

As you emerged into early adulthood (about 8,000 days in), you likely found the expanse of career goals and options that once felt infinite had narrowed into a select set of paths that you were tasked to choose from as you defined your unique place in the world.  

After several years in the professional world, and maybe after some false starts or less-than-ideal situations you find along the way, the concept of “success” becomes less of an abstract concept. Rather it becomes more of a critical lens through which you filtered opportunities and evaluate career options moving forward.  

In doing so, you also come to realize that, not only is the path to individual success non-linear, but it is also very often marked by instability, indecisiveness, second-guessing, and overall lack of direction. 

That’s perfectly ok – in today’s day and age career paths are not ladders, they are jungle gyms.   

Research has shown that what while there are many interpretations of what “success” on your path may look like, the most common definition really boils down to an intricate balance of four simple words (concepts): 

• Significance

• Happiness

• Achievement        

• Legacy

In short, you have on average about 20,000 days remaining to maximize the impact of these factors in your life. Let’s break these down further with some associated questions to consider for each:

Significance – The sense you’ve made a positive impact on others. 

–         What have you done to impact others in a positive way?  (Quality)

–         How have you positively affected the lives around you?  (Relevance)

–         How deeply were their lives impacted?  (Profundity)

Happiness – Feelings of pleasure about your life.  

–          Are you happy with the way things have turned out in your life thus far?

–          Are you happy with the path you are on moving forward? 

–          Do you feel like you have control over your mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional pillars of your life?

Achievement – Accomplishments that compare favorably against goals.

–          Are you clear on the specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound actions you are trying to        accomplish?

–          Whose definition of achievement are you using?

–          How will you measure it? (Financial independence, early retirement, ability to support your family?)

Legacy – A way to establish your values or accomplishments so as to help others find future success. 

–          What are you creating with your life?

–          How do your current efforts contribute to building something that will outlast you?

–          What do you want your defining legacy to be?

On a granular level, each of these five aspects of success and their associated questions can feel daunting.  

We are not programmed to think in such broad terms about the overall trajectory of our lives, yet the sum of the choices we make on a day to day basis and the conscious attention paid to them directly correlate with our feelings of significance, happiness, achievement, legacy, and love over the course of time.  

We tend to overestimate what we can accomplish in a year but underestimate what we can accomplish over ten years.  

Short-term thinking is often clouded by the worries of the present day, and rightfully so.  

From a global pandemic to rising unemployment and a shrinking economy, we are bombarded daily by reminders from all angles that there is no shortage of things to keep us up at night, wrought with anxiety.

The key is not to ignore, suppress, or wish-away the inherent struggles we are going through, but to embrace them as an enduring aspect of the human experience and acknowledge the reality of their existence in our lives.  

In doing so, we drain them of the power they have over us and dedicate our focus back where it belongs – on building significance, happiness, accomplishment, legacy, and love.  

When we turn our attention towards long-term thinking, this builds the bridge between helplessness and hope, a guiding force to direct our daily efforts towards activities, tasks, and goals that will have a compounding positive effect to help our future selves.

As we progress along the journey, it is important to remember some guiding principles:

• Significance can come from simplicity.  A kind word, a thoughtful gesture, or a note of encouragement are all currencies that can be used to create it. 
• Happiness is not something to be “found,” it is something to be independently created and defined.
• Achievement is not based in external accolades or status symbols, but rather the intrinsic feeling you have of accomplishing what you set out to do.
• Legacy may be defined at the end, but it is built through repeated actions, habits, and behaviors along the way.

Finding the appropriate balance and interplay across these dimensions will lead to more lasting success over time.  Too much focus on one could be at the expense of another (e.g. relentlessly pursuing career advancement while working unsustainable hours), so it will require personal reflection to constantly re-calibrate, adapt, and adjust to in order to maximize the present. 

In order to do so, many who have found enduring personal success have formed the habit of taking an on-going inventory across these four dimensions.

Using this as a framework, you can readily identify where there may be deficiencies of focus and opportunities for improvement, resulting in a firmer foundation on which to continue to build your life.  

Embrace this work in progress status, rather than a constant state of uncertainty, and seek to become incrementally better each and every day through thoughtful focus as to not be overwhelmed. 

Realize that no two paths will ever be the same for everyone, so the only benchmark you should have is who you were yesterday and who you want to be tomorrow.  This is the first step in helping future you. 

How will you approach the concept of success in your own life?