Happiness and Success - the chicken or the egg?

I was recently enjoying a friendly debate with my friend, advisor and fellow traveller on the entrepreneurial journey, Tonya. We were discussing what it means to have purpose and aspirations, and Tonya suggested that the aspirations we have - translated into goals - don’t necessarily equate to our happiness or the deeper meaning that we’re striving for. Especially when directly aimed at.  

My view is that having goals that are more aspirational in nature can be treated more like ‘lag’ indicators, where they become outputs of the journey rather than hard, fast targets themselves.  

If I can build something great, then the things I want to achieve will come naturally.  

I needn’t focus on the outcome itself but use it as a guiding light. 

Personally, I have a deep internal drive to achieve great things, I refer to them as legacy-builders. At the same time though, I constantly struggle with the question "at what point will I be satisfied with what I have done?”. 

If I don’t reflect on this question consciously, I will end up realising too late that nothing is ever enough and the light at the end of tunnel will never be reached. It’s one of the greatest motivations for innovation – wanting better – but it comes at a considerable cost if not kept in-check. 

On LinkedIn this week, I shared an epiphany I had in the Maternity Ward at Birmingham City Hospital when my wife, Simren, and I were expecting the birth of our second baby. I was too distracted by answering emails, texts and calls with investors to be in the moment. Then, in a moment, it suddenly struck me how crazy it was that I allowed myself to get so busy during such a pivotal moment in my life.  

It was at that point that I decided to chart down what success in life really meant to be, to ensure I never got my priorities out of order. It became my ‘Pyramid of Success’, now part of the larger Ithaca Framework which you can now download and use for free too.  

However, there is a distinct difference between what I want to achieve and the mission I have. For example, one of my career goals is to help offset more than 1 GtCO2.  

For argument’s sake, I could go about achieving this by culling the world’s population by half - reducing our overall emissions. This would achieve the goal but at the cost of what I know success feels like. Alternatively, I can build structures, organisations and ideas that change behaviour at scale. This aligns with my values and creates generative systems which mean people can be more prosperous whilst reducing the impact on the planet sharply. The latter example would result in fulfilment and ultimately, happiness naturally because I would be doing the right Work.  

I now know that I’m not looking for a quick fix. Happiness and success isn't about achieving the numbers alone, it's about doing the right Work.  

Happiness and success will are the byproduct of the journey.

I think Viktor Frankl (Man’s Search for Meaning ) says it best in his quote: 

“Don't aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it [...] Then you will live to see that in the long-run—in the long-run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it”