“To travel hopefully is better than to arrive” Robert Louis Stevenson
We live in a highly competitive world. There is a lot of weight placed on winning, or being the best, or passing up your competition. As a mother of five I even see it in my kids. I realize this can be a motivator for some people, but I define success as something totally different than winning a championship or having the best numbers, or a great report card, or owning the nicest car. Success can only be rated by the barometer that is inside us, and if you are not aware of this you will be stuck in the never ending hamster wheel of trying to be better than someone else. If you are defining success by outside measures, there will ALWAYS be someone who is performing at a higher level than you.
Success is actually a side effect, a by-product, of hard work. It comes when you have given all you have to be the best you can be. Is it possible to win without this? Of course it is, but I know that unless you are giving your all, the victories will feel empty. Only you know if you have given your best to whatever you are doing, whether you are leading a team, in a relationship, at the gym. Its been said that you are only competing with yourself, and I believe this whole-heartedly.
We have been blessed with success by external measures, and it is always a little disconcerting to me when people congratulate me for a busy restaurant. For me, the success of our restaurants is only an external indicator of what I am working to do. As we grew our business from one location, where I was an integral player on the court, a hands on operator, to where we are now, with 4 locations in different cities, it required me to look at success in a different way. I’m not going to candy coat it and say it was an easy evolution for me. It was some of the most difficult growth I have had to do thus far. As I moved from defining my worth as being busy, to defining my success instead as a leader, it required some heavy lifting.
We all have a strong innate desire to feel like we are here for a reason. We want to make a difference and matter. When I was an operator, it was easy to see that what I was doing, the daily tasks required to operate a business, made me matter. But now we are in a different place in our development. We have people working in our organization, leading, managing, doing better than I did at ensuring we are working together to meet and exceed our vision. Now, being the best I can be means I am learning constantly with intention. I am offering support and coaching to those that I lead. I am seeing the emergence of great leaders right in front of me, and it is very humbling.
The reminder yet again is to understand that success is a journey and is built on the foundation of bringing all you have to what you do. No matter what it is, playing full-out and always leaving nothing on the table. If you cannot bring yourself to do this on a daily basis, it’s time to do some soul searching. You may need to change what you do, or better yet, change why you are doing it. I never liked doing laundry, but I have found a why that makes it something I like to do. It is something I do to show my family I love them, and it is an opportunity for me to practice being present as I fold the clothes. I didn’t like to answer the email complaints we get when we fail to deliver on our promises of exceptional food and service, but now I put my all of my heart and love into the apologies and replies, and am grateful for the opportunity to hopefully make things right with the person. Success means that I have given my all, no matter what the result, win or lose. It’s all in how you run the race.