Redefine Success

My tenet for this post is that success carries with it satisfaction and fulfillment. That means that if you believe you are successful but are not satisfied and fulfilled then you are not, in fact, successful.

Think of the person who climbs the financial ladder, continually reaching higher and higher levels in the pay charts. By most external accounts he is successful, even by his own accounts he calls himself successful; and yet he is not truly satisfied or fulfilled. He is left thinking that perhaps the next level will be where satisfaction truly begins. That is where he will be able to stop for a moment and enjoy his success. How laughable... that one could be successful and not full of joy already.

There are also the millions of people who believe success is reaching a certain number on a scale. Then when they get there (or convince themselves they have come close enough) they find that it is not nearly as satisfying as they had hoped... mostly because the awful truth hits them; after you hit the magic number on the scale you do not magically stay there. The process is not truly over, and most of the time they hated the process it took to get to the number, hoping that the number itself would bring them fulfillment and satisfaction.

I believe we need to redefine success. We call so many people successful when they are not even happy. How can that be success?

Certainly we can play word games and paint the difference between external success (say winning a football game) and internal success (receiving satisfaction and fulfillment from that win). My recommendation is that we spend more time talking about the latter type of success. That is, the success that is focused on the process and not on individual achievements.

In this new world we can call people successful who are only a few steps up the corporate ladder but somehow manage to enjoy their families, give back to their communities, and smile at their co-workers. We can call someone successful who is 50 lbs. overweight, because we know that three months ago they were 60 lbs. overweight. We can count ourselves successful when the dishes only stacked up 2 feet before we got them cleaned... instead of the 3 feet it used to take to move us to action.

Why is it so important to think of ourselves as successful? Because the alternative is that we wallow in apathy. We begin to believe that success is not meant for us or that we are unable to achieve it. This is not only contrary to any objective look at the human condition, it is completely contrary to Scripture.

I am not trying to say that "Everyone is successful, you must only believe that it is so!" I am saying that everyone can be successful, and that they can achieve a type of success that is lasting and meaningful. There is success to be found on the journey that dwarfs anything a mere, momentary achievement can provide.

Process is Reality

Some of you may have missed the hugeness of the point I made in my last post (yes, hugeness is a word). I am only beginning to realize the scope of this truth and the impact it has on every facet of my life. Process is reality, and I don't like it. Let us just take a few examples of how this works:

1. Clean House. Most people want a clean house, and they hate cleaning. The fact is cleaning is a reality if you want a clean house. You don't just "achieve" cleanness and then it stays.
2. Getting in shape. Everyone wants to be in shape and have good health, few people like to change the way they eat and exercise. The fact is even if you reach your "goal weight" or look or whatever, you won't stay there unless you continue the process.
3. Spiritual development. It is all good and well to say that I want to learn how to "trust God better". But, there is a process that is required for that trust to move from intellect to experience. And, once I have learned to trust God in one area He will move the process to another area.

Life is a moving stream. We never sit still. You are either moving forward or backward... because process is reality; achievement is fleeting at best, pure fiction at worst. Think about it. How valuable are your greatest achievements in life if you take them as stand-alone events? Even beyond work, if we think of things like our marriage or our kids... they are without value apart from process. It is the process of being married for 12 years that has been valuable, not the one day that I actually became married. The same is true with my kids. There is very little value in having children if we are not going to put the time and effort into them that they require over the rest of their lives.

Every thing you have achieved at work is the same way... it finds its value within the process, not the one-time act. Even still we seem to fight this constant desire to "arrive". We think that if we can only, "meet the right person", "have good kids", "get that new promotion", or "meet this life-goal" that we will finally arrive at a destination that will bring us joy, fulfillment, and satisfaction.

The problem is that joy, fulfillment, and satisfaction are all things that are supposed to come from the process, not the achievement. Achievements are too small, too quickly come and gone, to carry the weight of something like joy. Achievements are too anchored in time to be able to provide something as future-minded as hope.

I will be coming back to this mindset change from time to time because it is insidious in its ability to work its way into every facet of our life... telling us that if we can only reach some higher achievement that we will finally be fulfilled.

People don't like Process

That has been my operating assumption over the last few weeks anyway. That is why I have been rather silent on the writing end of things... I don't really feel like I have accomplished anything. I am in the middle of many things, but with nothing very tangible or concrete to show for it.

Even as I write that sentence it seems rather depressing. At the same time it also reveals something in my heart that I believe God is attempting to remove... this need to achieve. More specifically He is attempting to remove the value I derive from my achievements. It is not that I believe God is calling me to a life of half-effort that never materializes. It is that He wants to make sure that my sense of self and success is not tied to those efforts or the things they produce.

So, in the last two weeks I have met with some churches about the possibility of coming on staff, been invited to join the leadership team on the church planter network in town, dropped off a non-profit business plan to a few key people around the country, and met several new pastors/pastoral teams that are doing ministry in the city/for the city. I had a blog picked up by Christianity Today and God dropped a huge financial gift on Leslie and I through some friends here in town and back East.

I would be a total brat if I did anything but respond with a heart of gratefulness and thanksgiving both to God and those He is using to minister to us. And yet I still fight the feeling that my life is actually counting for anything at the moment. It is at the same time incredibly frustrating and fulfilling. Frustrating because all of the usual things I point to in order to convince myself that my life matters just are not there. Fulfilling because I don't know if I can really explain the feeling of seeing God come through just in time again, and again, and again.

We often talk about "growing" to become "more like Christ". In business people talk about growth and process too. I think it is all a bunch of hogwash. Nobody likes to grow and people hate process. In reality we all want to get there. We want to arrive, not be stuck on the journey forever. I don't want to become more like Christ... I want to be a good Christian. I don't want to keep becoming a better leader... I want to learn that one trick that will make me a good leader.

My life is currently one long, drawn out process, and I am learning that it is in the process of life that transformation occurs. I have also made a rather startling discovery. It could very well be that God never wants me to leave the process. Certainly the specifics may change, but I have a very strong belief that He will not be content to let me arrive until I actually DO arrive in Heaven.

More on this as I work through it. If you are one of those people that like to read the messiness of the process let me know and I will do my best to keep track of it. I give fair warning though that the life Leslie and I are currently leading is rather messy, and the road is often winding... so don't blame me if what I say one day gets contradicted the next :).