The FractionX Podcast
Leadership is Hard. We're here to help.
The FractionX Podcast
Addicted to Success?
The amount of effort and ambition it takes to become "successful" is almost unquantifiable. And, more than a few of us have become addicted to the process and the results of success along the way. Today Matt and Drew talk about redefining success, and how to put the emphasis on the most important things in your leadership.
drew. We're back at it. I wore the blazer today because it's a serious topic, you know.
Speaker 2:I mean business dude I've honestly, I feel the power coming across the table. It is a power blazer.
Speaker 1:Let's go with power. So let me tell you how I knew I wasn't going to make it in the music business.
Speaker 2:That's a great lead-in line. Oh yeah, how did you know so?
Speaker 1:I was a pretty good musician and I surrounded myself with pretty good musicians. You're better than pretty good. But go on and record deals in hand and all that stuff. It's like you, you, you move from a small town to Nashville and you think, dude, we got our stuff together, like this is going to be legit. Yeah, I went to a buddy's house to play poker one night and we invited this other guy who's a great guitar player and he didn't play poker, he just brought his guitar in like a little doodle in the background.
Speaker 1:Doodle in the background doodle in the background, so he was like around us, but he was, he was going to practice while we were socializing. Okay, I was like, oh, there's a level of commitment to an instrument to be successful that I'll never have. Like, you have to love that and pursue that with such like fervor that even a poker night is taking time away from practicing your instrument. I was like, yeah, I'm never going to be that guy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like I'm never going to be that guy. Yeah, Like like I'm never going to be that locked in to my craft.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah, so I was thinking about this, like what does it mean to be addicted to success? Yeah, and you know we work with entrepreneurs, we're entrepreneurs and you see stories of hyper successful people and I always wonder, like, what in the world does it take to get there? And if you could get a moment of self-awareness with them, would they say it's worth it?
Speaker 2:when it's all said and done, yeah, I mean that's it's a great topic and I think it's something that any anybody in any kind of leadership executive, leadership, owners, operators this is something that you have to wrestle with because there is a tension to manage here that is probably going to be a forever tension, like it's never going to go for people that don't know that whole phrase would do you know what the whole phrase is?
Speaker 2:not a problem to solve, but attention to manage. Yeah, yeah, um, I think it's an andy stanley thing, or he at least made it famous. I'm not sure who who did, but and I, I think some people hate that phrase because it feels like a cop out, but there's true, it's truth to it. There's truth to it. Like there's just some times where I can't solve this problem. I have to manage this tension, and the tension that we're trying to manage is I want to do things, I want to do great things, I want to be great, I want to be successful. In order to be successful, what do I have to exchange to get to that level of greatness?
Speaker 1:and success.
Speaker 2:My guess is, and I think it's pretty well documented, that a lot of the greats in any industry, a lot of the times and this is over generalization a lot of the times they're this is over generalization a lot of the times they're not great humans, sure. They're not great friends, they're not great spouses, they're not great fathers. You know, you can watch, you know my son is 13. He loves sports documentaries and so we watch a lot of sports documentaries in time and time again, especially the ones about the coaches, who are really dedicated, or the great players, man, they have sacrificed everything to be great They've sacrificed relationship with their kids.
Speaker 2:They're on multiple marriages. They have just hyper-focused on that one thing to become great, and so it begs the question what do you value the most? You know what I'm saying? That's a tough tension to manage.
Speaker 1:I was just thinking so it's, this is the week of the PGA championship. As we're recording this, I'm not sure we're going to release it and I mean there's just no getting around that Tiger Woods is. He's the greatest golfer that's ever existed. Period, so that's it. Yeah, 82, you know, wins 15 majors. I don't follow golf, but like, but he's like and he changed the sport. I mean, yeah, the guy that won last week, I think, won like three million dollars and the fact that a purse is that high is due to tv contracts and corporate sponsorships. All that's in place because of tiger woods. Like it was just an old white guy. Sport for decades, you know, right, he came in as a young, gifted athlete and changed the game forever. Right, but, um, the stories on tour is like, nobody liked him, like you're not going to go get a beer with tiger after a round of golf because he's probably going to the gym or back to the range to keep working on something. Yeah, you know, pretty small social circle. And then he, like you said, railroaded his life.
Speaker 2:You know, yeah, same with I mean michael jordan, right, kobe bryant. You hear the stories of like they're great, but they were. They were tough teammates, tough people to be around you know, wrestled like with addiction, the gambling addiction. There's just a lot of things in their life that you know that and I think, like not to get too far in sports analogy, but I think it's a difference in like LeBron James and some of these guys and again, I don't know any of these guys personally, but you know, LeBron seems to just not have that same like intensity towards the sport. Right he'll? He's been on record saying it's just basketball it's just a game.
Speaker 2:You never would have heard jordan or kobe say that. Never, it was not just a game to them, like they took that serious right and so I don't know, I I started to apply this to my, to my own life and my own leadership, and it it really is tough. I mean I'd love to hear you know your thoughts on this and it it really is tough. I mean I'd love to hear you know your thoughts on this. But, like it's, it's tough because I am a dreamer and I do have aspirations.
Speaker 2:You know, financially, um, personally, you know for my business, for my life, for my family. And you know you scroll through social media and you see so much talk about you got to hustle, you got to grind, you got to work. You know you scroll through social media and you see so much talk about you got to hustle, you got to grind, you got to work. You know, 80 hours a week, you got to, you know, and I'm just a place in my life where I'm like I'm not doing that, you know. But I also still want to be successful and grow a business.
Speaker 1:I saw this recent study done of is basically looking at hyper successful business leaders. Okay, it probably translates to sports as well. And there were not 10, or not seven or nine, but three common traits. And it wasn't five, 30 AM ice baths and it wasn't reading two self-improvement books by 4 AM.
Speaker 2:I can't do that.
Speaker 1:But I thought the three things were really telling. The first one is a massive superiority complex. Okay, I know better than everybody else. I am better than everybody else, okay.
Speaker 1:That one's kind of given right. The second one is this massive insecurity that I'll never be enough. So I can't stop because something's chasing me. Yeah, that I'll never be enough, so I can't stop because something's chasing me, this inferiority secret complex, which is funny juxtaposition to the superiority complex. And the last one is just this massive impulse control. Like I will not be dissuaded, I will not lose focus on what I've set out to do. And you know, in retrospect, hearing those, I was like, okay, yeah, that those sound like three ingredients to create success. Yeah, but I also go where do those come from? And I actually had this phrase I was talking to a client. I said I wonder if success is a trauma response, hyper success, interesting, like, what is it in our past that puts the fear of God in us, or whatever it is that has to to chase this down, so we feel something as opposed to feeling something else.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I mean, I think that's that's a big part of it. I mean not to get too far down the therapeutic mental health thing. But you know, most of us are dealing with trying to heal some sort of childhood wound and especially if you come from a really great family, it's sometimes it's really difficult to figure out what that is. Uh, which was my story? I have great parents. They stayed together, they loved us, they provided for us all this stuff and so, like I really like struggled with childhood wound we talking about like I don't have any, you know, so it took a lot of.
Speaker 2:Oh, I do have things that I'm either overcompensating for.
Speaker 2:Or you think about people that come from a real successful family that are trying to just keep the bar, like they're just trying to measure up, or people that come from poverty and they're trying to beat the scarcity mindset and so that's what motivates them.
Speaker 2:So it can be on either side of those things. But I think the trauma response thing, it can be very real because a lot of times we are chasing success, because that thing is the place we found where we can win right, it's like, man, I don't necessarily know how to be a good husband, like I don't know how to be a good father, I don't know how to win at home, I don't know how to do all these things, and so I'm going to pour myself into this thing that I feel like I can control right, Like you can't control it, but it feels like if I work hard enough and if I do the right things and I check all the boxes and I listen to the right podcast and I read the right books and I just I do all this stuff, I'm in control of that I can make it happen. And I think a lot of us pour ourselves into our work as our identity, because it's like this is the place where I can measure wins.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, I've heard somebody say a man's heart follows his competence.
Speaker 1:Okay, I haven't heard that he gives his heart to the thing he feels most competent in. And for a lot of us, maybe parenthood doesn't feel like a place of competence, maybe our marriage and relationships don't feel like a place of competence. A lot of times the messages we get are those are places of incompetence. We're not the right partner, right spouse, we're not parenting as well as other people we know. But at work we get out of boys, we get accolades, people pat us on the back for working hard, working overtime. So it's like well, I feel competent here, I'm going to give my heart to that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we follow the affirmation and that's where we're getting a lot of affirmation there, and meanwhile there's a chasm that grows, because the more we give ourselves to work and the more affirmation we get there and the more we chase it, the more we stop showing up for the people at home or the people in our close friends circle or whatever, and so the less we're getting affirmations there, we might actually start getting the opposite. We might actually get, start getting like man, you, you suck at being a dad or like there's tension in the home which makes you run even more to that thing, you know. But at the end of the day, like I feel like a lot of leaders are like man, they're just wanting to be known, they're wanting to be seen and loved and they're chasing those things. And I think it's why the statistics are what they are for CEOs and C-suite leaders when it comes to loneliness and depression and anxiety and all the things.
Speaker 2:Because I think you realize, man, I've poured myself into something that is very like performance based. It's not me, it's my performance, and if my performance ever went away, then all the affirmation goes away too. Right, it's not like these people aren't loving me for who I am. They're loving me for what I do, whereas the people closest to you are wanting to love you for who you are. But you've you've sacrificed who you are on the altar of success.
Speaker 1:Right. What do you think about the phrase that connection is the opposite of addiction.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean that was something that I learned. I went through a treatment thing for 90 days in 2022. And that was the biggest thing that I learned was you know, a lot of times people talk about sobriety being the opposite of addiction, and what you said is very true. It's like it's not actually it's it's being connected, staying connected to to who you are, staying connected to close friends. Um, you know, you're someone that had walked with me through that season and that that connection is huge. Right, it's like staying connected to people who are like, who want the best for you, who will speak truth. I mean, that's another reason why leaders are lonely is because they just don't have enough people in their life who are not getting a paycheck from them.
Speaker 1:Well, I was going to say you talked about a spiral with family, where it's like I feel competent here, so I pour in here, which makes the relationships worse, right, so that's a spiral that gets like a feedback loop that goes bad, right. The same feedback loop exists with the circle, professionally, that they have. So they try to put high performers around them, but if they're the hyper successful, addicted to success leader, they burn those people out after a couple of years cause they can't keep up, right, and so then they replace them with other people that they think can keep up with them. Yeah, and that continues to further isolate them and their journey to be you know.
Speaker 2:As you were talking, I was just thinking there's no greater feeling in the world than for the people who know you best to affirm who you are Like. That is to me like, because, at the end of the day, when you get affirmed for your performance, you know that it's a projection of who you are Like. You know who you are behind closed doors. You know who you are. That's not the real thing, although it feels good, you know who you are behind closed doors. Yeah, you know who you are. Is that's not the real thing, although it feels good. You know like that's not you're.
Speaker 2:You're affirming the person I'm projecting for you to see right and a lot of leaders who are successful. They're high performers, they know how to perform well, and so you know. But to hear it from the people that are closest to you, that's when, like, that's the most meaningful thing. You know it's like, and I didn't know. I didn't know we're gonna be talking about this today, but just literally this morning, on the drive I drive my son to school every morning and out of nowhere, he just said you're a great dad dang.
Speaker 2:I'm like and if you know my story, like arguably I haven't been a great dad right in the past, like there's moments where I'm like man, I'm a pretty crappy dad, but for the people closest to you to see you showing up for them and trying to show up for them, and to go through hard things and trauma, but them to say, hey, you know, in his 13-year year old way, for him to be like man, you're showing up, you're taking me to school, you're no, it's like, you're a great, great dad. I was able to sort of see it. Instead of being like no, no, it's kind of like thanks, man, you're a great son, like having that moment. But I'd trade that. I mean, I wouldn't trade that for all the applause of hundreds of thousands of people 100% Right.
Speaker 1:So I think it's important you know we're talking about addicted to success. Very few people have a working definition for success. For them. I think we have this like okay, looking from the outside in, we see other people and we assume success because there's those metrics Like it could be big house, big cars, big bank account, could be vacations, whatever those things are. It's like, oh, big cars, big bank account, could be vacations, whatever those things are. It's like, oh, that person must have been successful. And side note, rabbit trail, you never know what someone sacrificed to get those things right. That's right.
Speaker 1:But also say, okay, there's probably a working definition of success that a healthy leader is going to put in place that is a guardrail against the devolving addictive cycles that happen with that, and so I've kind of been working on one and you can tell me what you think about this. But for me, I think success is having the resources and the courage to make the wise and best choice at all times. Okay, Resources and courage to make the wise and best choice at all times. What success? Kind of boiling that down is like I won't be controlled by circumstances that dictate to me what I have to go do, and it's not a thing I want to go do. It's not like I get to do what I want, so that's success.
Speaker 1:It's like, no, um, I'm going to understand in a situation what a great choice is via wisdom and having the resources to make that choice, and I'm just not going to get caught off guard, I'm not going to be backed into a corner to make a crappy decision. Now, it doesn't mean sometimes you have to chase a revenue stream. That's suboptimal, you know, but hopefully that's not going to be forever. So it's like you may take on a client that you don't want to take on because in this moment you've got to cover a revenue stream for a quarter, for a year, whatever that is. But again, that's why it's a working definition chasing success, where I want to get to a point where it's like no, I don't have to take clients I don't want to take. I don't have to make business decisions I don't want to make. I want to have wisdom, I want to have resources to make those great decisions in the future.
Speaker 2:I love that. I might actually steal that one. That's a great and earlier, when you were talking, I actually wrote this down because I do think it takes takes taking a step back and defining success 100% Like get out of the weeds, get out. I mean, this is you know, if you listen to this podcast, you're going to hear us talk about this all the time. You have to work on it, not just in it. Part of working on it is a working definition of what success looks like in your life Right.
Speaker 1:Personal life, not just your business life, exactly right.
Speaker 2:And scarcity mindset around resources and finances, exactly right. And and scarcity mindset around resources and finances, like I don't think you have to apologize and say, hey, here's what I want to make for my family so that I can provide this. So for those reasons, like for for us I've said before, we value freedom, autonomy. We don't want to be a slave to the nine to five, whatever we want to be able to pick up and, you know, be gone for a month in the summer and work from wherever we want. Like those are things we value. Now that doesn't mean we have to sacrifice, you know, resource order to do it, or we might. We might say, hey, listen, we're not going to take this client because we value this thing as a, as a family.
Speaker 2:But I think if you don't take some time to really, you know, write down, like what you did, like a mission statement or or even a bullet point list, like here's the things that I value and those are like your compass, you know it's a big part of the shameless plug, it's a big part of like these masterminds we do we actually do a whole session on this kind of thing, like we're going to help with vision and strategy. For sure, we're going to help with marketing, messaging, all that kind of stuff, but we're also going to spend time talking about what success looks like for you and how to structure your business and your life around this Cause. Ultimately, we can help leaders succeed in their business, but if they're failing and losing at the game of life, right, then what's the point of all of it, right? So that's a big part of our process.
Speaker 1:So maybe we'll wrap with this story and it's an exercise, so this will be kind of given away. A bit of something we would do at our masterminds is when we're talking about being addicted to success. Part of it is self-awareness and steps to grow self-awareness. There's a lot of things you can do, but one of the most helpful exercises I've ever done, um, I'll call it the chariots of fire exercise, you know, have you done this one? Okay, so if you don't know the story, um, there's this.
Speaker 1:I think it's an English um racer, you know, track athlete, um, very committed to his faith and I think was faced with a choice of do I run on Sunday, which violates my values and my religious beliefs, or do I do the thing I was put on earth to do, which is be a racer?
Speaker 1:And there's this pivotal moment in the story where I think he's talking to his sister and he says God made me fast and when I run I sense his pleasure. And so there's this exercise I think every leader needs to work through and there's a couple blanks you can put in there and whether you believe in God, whether you have faith or not, you could say the universe. So that makes you more comfortable. But I'll just say God, god made me blank, and when I blank I sense his pleasure. And so, again, if you're not comfortable with faith, that's fine. You can just say man, I'm really gifted at X, and when I use that gift this way, I know I'm at the right place in the universe at the right time. I'm doing what I was meant to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Dude, I love that so much and I? Just one quick add on to that is I think we need to debunk the myth of it's on our shoulders and we can control the future when it comes to our success. I think if we do what you just said, we do that exercise and then we just show up and do the next right thing. Yeah, it's like just what's the next? What's the thing I need to do today? What's the next right thing? It may be taking the morning off and going and giving it to your family. That's the next right thing. I promise you that that way of life will lead you to success, more than the cold plunge in the morning and getting up. Nothing's wrong with those things right, those are great things if you're into it. But this idea that I have to strive and make it happen, as opposed to just trusting and have an open-handed, surrendered approach to life and trusting that good things are going to come your way when you do the next right thing.