Success means different things for different people. Identifying what it looks like at a personal level, puts us in alignment with the right path.
I read snippets of Think and Grow Rich, many years ago, and it didn’t click for me.
Yesterday I picked up again my Kindle and started reading. The introduction is jarring… this is the ultimate solution, but you might not be ready to see it. But if you do, you can become a millionaire. Yeah, well, it does sound shady. I guess that is why I didn’t give it much credit in the past.
Yet, some ideas of the book started to fall in alignment. I did the “all-in” thing a couple of times in my life, and it did bring the results I was hoping for. So going all in does work in my experience. It’s a particular alignment that’s really powerful. I also saw it in other people, in some I see it regularly, and against many odds, they do go and get what they want.
There are two keywords here: one is “all-in”, the second is “alignment”. They are two ways to say the same, and two angles to understand it.
I like working with people who are in this state of mind. They have clarity of intent, they think things through and they are very responsive. They call the scientist in me, and don’t waste my time. They are a minority. I also like working with the “others”, the ones that don’t have clarity, the ones that have no idea what they are doing, the ones who carry their online presence as a weight instead of a flag. They are more difficult to work with, they do waste a lot of my time, but they call my mama hen instinct. I can’t help it.
Reading this also brought me to an old internal conversation. I’ve helped build big structures, why not build my own? Why do I choose to be the hand and not the brain when I do have both?
The answer came yesterday, finally, and I’m sharing because it might resonate with some. I am “all in” with my family.
Everything else comes second. And this is how I want it to be. What keeps me in alignment. So I choose to go after my other passions (learning and helping build businesses, what help me learn more) once my main work is done.
At this stage of my life, my family is healthily independent. And this is why I came out to work again, because I know I can deliver. And the more independent they are the more I will be able to give to my own business.
Will I ever be able to go all-in? I don’t know. Probably not. And it’s fine by me. There is no shame in being all-in about something that’s so unfathomable valuable that can never have a price tag.