Two Main types of success…and one of them can ruin you!

You want to be successful.

But what does that mean?

Making $X,000,000 in X years? Growing your business to X size? Getting married to the person of your dreams? Climbing Mount Everest? Becoming an A-list Hollywood celebrity?

What if I told you that becoming successful could ruin your life instead of save it?

The thing is, it can — if you pursue the wrong type of success.

Type 1: Success in what you do.

Type 1 success is easy to define. It consists of fame, fortune, and fans, or some combination thereof. It can be measured in amount of dollars earned, awards received, competitions won, etc.

Also, attaining Type 1 Success is simple. Not easy, but simple.

All it requires is blood, sweat, and tears.

And maybe a little luck.

Cheating, lying, stealing, and cutting corners can also help you achieve this kind of success, in some cases.

But warning: this kind of success is hard to hold on to.

Sports records are broken all the time. Champions can be defeated by young upstarts. Businesses may lure competitors’ clients away with shiny innovations and deals.

And if you cheated, lied, or stole your way into Type 1 Success, your chances of losing everything is astronomically higher:

· Bernie Madoff made tons of money off his Ponzi Scheme…but is now serving life in prison.

· San Lu tried to profit by selling adulterated infant formula. But when hundreds of thousands of babies got sick, several company officials were given lengthy prison sentences and even the death penalty.

· Lance Armstrong won seven Tour de Frances and innumerable fans, but he was stripped of his titles and banned from Olympic sports for life when his long-term doping offenses were discovered.

Worse, this type of success can leave you feeling empty.

Too many successful people — famous and influential artists, writers, inventors, and more — either committed suicide or died penniless, despite the fame and fortune their works brought them (Oscar Wilde, Nikola Tesla, Sammy Davis, Jr., Judy Garland, Michael Jackson, Virginia Woolf, and many, many more).

The emptiness of success is a well-documented phenomenon. And it appears the greater the success, the greater the potential of emptiness. Consider these sound bytes from “successful” people:

“I’m plagued with insecurities 24/7” –Madonna

“As I get more successful, insecurities only pile on top of one another” –Oscar Wilde

“I have self-doubt. I have insecurity. I have fear of failure.” –Kobe Bryant

And even if this type of success gives you the happiness you think you want, it may last only until retirement.

Is success always is so ephemeral, unreliable, even treacherous? Not the second type.

Type 2: Success in who you are.

The second type of success is harder to define. It’s not really quantifiable, and does not rely on fame or fortune as an outward measuring stick.

This type of success might best defined as how far you have mastered yourself (your cowardice, selfishness, and pride), how close you are to the kind of person you are meant to be, and how deeply you have impacted other’s lives for good.

But not only is this type of success difficult to define, it is difficult to achieve.

It isn’t just about hard work and a touch of luck. People who achieve this kind of success also must develop difficult-to-define qualities such as humility, wisdom, integrity, and courage.

There is no way to lie, cheat, or steal your way into this type of success.

But if you do achieve it, you will not be left empty. And no one can take it from you — not a competitor, nor an accident, nor retirement.

Moreover, those who achieve Type 2 Success are far more likely to achieve Type 1 success as well:

· Desmond Doss: stuck to his conviction not to kill, becoming an oft-bullied conscientious objector. But his belief in the sanctity of life fueled an incredible one-man rescue attempt during WWII, eventually earning him the Bronze Medal and the Medal of Honor.

· Eric Liddell: believed in honoring God by refusing to race on Sundays. He ended up becoming not only a gold-medal Olympian, but a beloved and influential missionary in China.

· Joni Eareckson Tada: refused to give in to depression and self-pity after a tragic accident in her teens left her paralyzed from the neck down. Today she is a brilliant artist and founder (along with her husband) of a non-profit organization that delivers wheelchairs to needy people who cannot afford them.

Case Study: Chad Williams, former US Navy SEAL

Navy SEAL training is notorious for being one of the most excruciating experiences a person can go through. Applicants are tortured, screamed at, and pushed to the edges of their physical and mental capacities. Those who survive are proud to be known as the best of the best, and rightly so.

The year Chad Williams decided to try out for the Navy SEALs, 173 hopefuls began the training with him. But only 13 completed it.

Chad was one of the 13.

On his graduation day, though, Williams felt a strange sense of loss.

I had accomplished my “big thing.” I had reached my mountaintop, only to discover…that the view disappointed me. And there was no higher step to take…Why did I feel so disappointed? –Chad Williams, SEAL of God

Unbeknownst to Chad, he was experiencing what speaker and apologist Ravi Zacharias once described:

one of the loneliest moments a man will ever experience is when he has achieved that which he thought would deliver the ultimate, and in the end, it lets him down.

To fill the emptiness, Williams fell into a dangerous spiral: drinking, partying, becoming a danger to himself and his family.

One day, during a Greg Laurie crusade, Williams finally realized that his outward success, including becoming a SEAL, did not matter so much as the pride and selfishness that was rotting him from the inside out.

From that day on, Williams was a changed man. He became a humble person with integrity, refusing to go drinking, clubbing, and womanizing with his fellow SEALs — some of whom, ironically, tried to kill him for it.

But Williams stayed strong and stuck with his convictions. He served in the military during the early years of the War on Terror, then retired in order to write and speak, leaving behind the prestige of working as a SEAL to teach others the lessons he’d learned and the hope he had found.

Why do people pursue success?

For most of us, it’s not the success itself that we want. It’s the happiness, meaning, self-affirmation that we think comes with success.

But these gems only come with one type of success: success in who you are.

Writer, neuropsychiatrist, and holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl once said:

Don’t aim at success. The more you aim at it, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself.

In other words, whether you desire to earn millions or become a Navy SEAL, if that is ALL you focus on, you will find yourself disappointed after hitting that goal.

That’s partly why rich men are driven to make more money (no matter how much they already have), and athletes are driven to keep making and breaking records.

Type 1 success, on its own, always leads to dissatisfaction. And that frustration and dissatisfaction can lead to dissipation, despair, even death.

To avoid this downward spiral, think of a jewelry box: no matter how beautiful it is, it’s really only valuable because of the jewel it contains.

You are the jewel. What you do is the box.

Work on you, not the box.

10 Different Types Of Success

Material Success revolves around the things that you own or things you can buy. This includes the size of your house, the brand of your car(s) and where you vacation. But there are different types of success that can also give you significance and different areas have different significance for different people.

Commercial Success refers to how successful you are in your job or business. This includes how much money you earn, your position or title in the company, your professional reputation and how quickly your business is growing.

Emotional Success relates to the way that you feel and the way that things in your life make you feel. This includes your mental health, your relationships – particularly with your spouse and family, self-esteem and your outlook on life

Intellectual Success is measured by how much you are challenged and are learning. This obviously includes academic success but also covers your ability to learn new things quickly in the workplace, your ability to understand the world around you and your need for challenge in order to keep you engaged.

Spiritual Success involves how content you feel about your spirituality or religion. This might include having a sense of belonging or understanding your greater purpose.

Physical Success reflects how your body feels and how you feel about your body. This involves not only your physical health, but also your level of fitness, how much energy you have and also your weight.

Your Evangelical Success is a measure of how much influence you have over other people. How good is your informal leadership qualities, your ability to inspire other people and their willingness to follow your lead. In a subtler form, it may also reflect how well people remember you.

Environmental Success measures your interaction with the environment around you -how it helps you and how you help it. This will include the way that your home and general surroundings make you feel and how environmentally friendly your lifestyle is. Do you compost your scraps, cycle to work sometimes or volunteer for an environmental charity?

Time Success is all about your time on earth. How long you will live – obviously connected to Physical Success. How well you manage your time. How you prioritize what you spend your time on

Finally, Collective Success is all about how you get along with other people. This includes how well you work or play in a team and how productive you are when in a team. Do people know, like and trust you?