The Most Underrated and Enjoyable Secret to True Success
Imagine a life where every day feels fulfilling, challenges are met with a smile, and success is not just an achievement but a joyful journey.
What if I told you that the secret to this kind of life is not hidden in wealth, status, or fame but in something much simpler and often overlooked?
This secret to true success has been a daily practice weaved into my lifestyle for many years. Most days, my levels of this magical potion are high and overflowing. I can feel it and work hard to return to normal when they're not. It’s propelled me to do good work, build a strong family, and overcome significant obstacles in life.
Although it is hidden in plain view and available to all of us, we tend to ignore it, walk past it, minimize it, and underestimate it.
When a successful person inspires us, we want this underlying thing. It’s not wealth, status, respect, or fame. These are just likely companions and by-products of it. We know this because when we tune into that frequency in someone with neither wealth nor status, we still want to be like them.
In the last twenty years, cutting-edge studies have dispelled the myth that it is not the natural product of true success but the underlying source of it.
The secret sauce of true success is happiness.
Researchers' surprising discoveries show that we now know that happy people are healthier, wealthier, and live longer.
Let me repeat this: happy people are most likely to have success, not the other way around. We sacrifice decades of life to pursue success and make ourselves miserable while missing the very thing that produces the healthiest, most lasting version of success we can imagine.
The word Happiness lacks dimensionality in its current use, so we often use a more profound word to describe it: joy.
I tend to employ a synonym for the word joy that resonates with me at a higher level: delight.
It feels fuller than happiness and adds to the depth of joy, a sense that ranges from quiet wonder to the over-the-top fireworks of exuberance.
That magical state of being is what we tune into when we see a speaker elevate our very soul, witness an athlete soar in the arena, hear about an inventor creating life-changing technology, or experience an artist changing us through a guitar solo.
We misinterpret delight as the unique gift of the “chosen ones” when it’s, in fact, the very source of true mastery and available to anyone who cares to pay attention to its magical attributes. Somewhere in our childhood, delight is educated out of us. Walk into a first-grade art class, and you’ll notice that every child is an artist, using delight and imagination to the fullest. Do the same by high school, and the percentage of kids regularly in that state plummets.
This is why we use art therapy in our Ascend Academy program in Ukraine to help children deal with war trauma.
We also know that children laugh around 150 times a day, while adults laugh about 15 times a day. Not only do we not see the disconnect but also mistrust delight and think of it as frivolous. Most of us cannot bear a full day of delight a week without a false sense of guilt, which makes us “get something productive done.”
Get a personalized score of the key dimensions for a successful life with our Xponential Score. Many find it enlightening, thought-provoking, and even life-changing as a jumping-off point for decisive action.
Delight should be nurtured, followed, and trusted so that we can discover our own unique place and purpose. That spark is what we recognize in the most successful people in all areas of life. We see true mastery as the product of never letting go of delight as fuel and a guiding light in life. We help our Xponential Life clients tap into this source, and when they do, an internal shift happens, a core recalibration. It’s like seeing in color after years of seeing in black and white. We’re tapping into a forgotten inner resource that was there the whole time.
The truth is developing a lifestyle that elevates delight brings very practical advantages:
1. Enhanced creativity and problem-solving
2. Improved stress management
3. Stronger relationships
4. Increased motivation and engagement
5. Enhanced physical health
6. Positive outlook and resilience
7. Attraction of opportunities
8. Better decision-making
Far from being frivolous and irresponsible, delight is the secret to a high-performance life for purpose-driven professionals. It’s what we call a macro-nutrient of a truly successful life.
Every morning and throughout the day, delight is available to me. It’s what fuels even the most mundane things I do. Like most other skills, you lose it if you don’t use it. It takes intentionality, discipline, and faith to get it back.
If you’re still reading this, you may long for it more than you thought. To you, I say: find it, weave it into the very fabric of your daily life, and you will soar like never before. It’s worth it.
What you may enjoy: a guest podcast episode on the Combat to Commerce podcast where we discuss integrating skills that may seem unrelated to the marketplace into a decisive competitive advantage.
What I’m watching: I don’t usually watch animated films, but Inside Out 2 is such a masterpiece. If you love this post, watch the movie and notice the vital role the character of Joy plays along with other emotions. The film makes the valuable point that all of our feelings and experiences are important to shape us into who we are. I would only point out that Joy is an emotion we must nurture and make central to living a full life.
What I’m reading: One of my core practices to nurture delight is the Sabbath. It’s been a central practice for my family for around 15 years. A new book on the subject I just started is Subversive Sabbath: The Surprising Power of Rest in a Nonstop World by A.J. Swoboda
Upcoming Free Webinar: This is your last chance to claim your spot on my last free webinar before we break for the summer: Develop Anti-Fragility- Thrive in Times of Change. It’s on June 29th at 12PM CST. If we run out of spots, get on the waitlist, and we’ll try to get you in.