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Success as a duty

Success As A Duty And Obligation?

Perhaps the most significant paradigm-shift in my life to date was my immersion in the ideas articulated in Grant Cardone’s The 10X Rule, and the adoption of the philosophy that success is not an option, but a moral responsibility and obligation. Cardone’s thinking is not merely an entrepreneurial perspective on goal-setting, as it unabashedly treats success as a moral obligation.

I had long viewed success as a luxury item, something I would enjoy buying if I ever had enough money left over after paying the bills. For years, when success eluded me I would say to myself: At least I am doing OK. That’s good enough. Now, I realise that my previous attitude towards success, and the way I was messing around trying to do things halfway, was a kind of theft, not only from myself, but from everyone else who depends on me.

For Cardone, ‘Success breeds confidence. Success breeds certainty. And success breeds the capacity to contribute at a higher level.’ Without it, we can’t support the people we care about in any lasting way. ‘It’s part of my DNA not to allow myself to fail and to do whatever it takes,’ he explained. ‘Every minute of every day, every day of every year, it’s my responsibility to be successful.’ That rang true for me. The day I started viewing success as my duty was the day I stopped living like a kid.

My most powerful response to his argument is that seeing success as an ethical matter made it more important. Cardone’s biggest influence on me was the way in which he insisted that success is an ethical issue. Many of us think that doing good is about self-sacrifice; we give money to charities and donate time volunteering at soup kitchens and homeless shelters but, when it comes to our own careers – our primary source for income and support – it becomes a different story. We pay someone to feed our children while we pursue the opportunity to increase our income, tolerate few hours of sleep, and neglect our health. Cardone’s remarks reminded me of the duties of parenting. When it comes to our children, we naturally see their health and wellbeing as part of our job.

But if we aren’t serious about trying to do good, if we are willing only to give success a shot, then we will not give it our best effort. We will sell ourselves and others short. We will fail ourselves not just as individuals, but as enhancers of the future of the communities and families we care about.

It’s tempting to succumb to this way of thinking, or to conclude that giving a ‘little’ is enough. That’s a big part of Cardone’s explanation for why so many people don’t succeed – because they believe success is optional. If success is seen as a privilege you can choose not to have, rather than an obligation to honour, you won’t feel obliged to do whatever it takes to reach it.

For a long time, I been my own culprit of modest goals, but I’d considered them ambitious because I knew I was capable of delivering, even though I feared challenging myself to deliver more. My excuses for being afraid to commit to living life at a higher level meant that I had adjusted my standard for what it meant to be a successful employee and, perhaps more importantly, a successful human being. When I defined success for myself as nothing more than what was ‘good enough’ or ‘acceptable’, I was defining for myself what it means to be HOLED. And holding myself accountable made it OK for me to ‘be’ something less than my best; it gave me a permission to hid behind a false sense of security. The 10X Rule opened my eyes, allowed me to see my modest goals as fundamentally unworthy of my talents and abilities and defined success as a part of my responsibility to the world.

Another important lesson from Cardone is that success is a state in motion: just like you can’t stop breathing after one gulp of air, one successful accomplishment isn’t enough to sustain your lifetime. Because of that, you should always strive to achieve more, not let your last achievement be your last. So success is a state in motion, not a final destination.

When I started that changing vision, I stopped feeling the inevitable complacency that comes when we score an easy win. Instead of just enjoying my victory and resting on my laurels, I started to see each day as if it were my first and wanted to make it just as important. I’ve stayed successful because I’ve pushed myself to continually seek that next way I can improve.

Road to success

When I began treating success as a responsibility, I noticed a ripple effect in my life. My family, friends and colleagues started to follow suit in my footsteps as they modelled my behaviour and started treating their goals with more reverence. When the people around you observe that you treat success as a responsibility, they too bandwagon on this approach by treating success the same way. Cardone’s claim that treating success as a responsibility can be contagious, and can improve the lives of the people around you, isn’t only a motivational statement. It’s also a real-life phenomenon I’ve seen play out in my own life.

Philosophising that achievement is a responsibility and an obligation transforms your relationship with life from reactive to actual. From ‘hoping’, it shifts to ‘creation’. It’s not as if the switch is on some sort of compulsive need for control. Rather, it’s a robust sense of responsibility that helps to create the kind of solutions that bring effective and lasting fulfilment.

Then, once you ingrain this mindset, everything you do is subservient to that overarching goal – not only for your own benefit, but for the benefit of other people and society. Indeed, if you can recall any single lesson from The 10X Rule above all others, it’s that success must be pursued as a calling rather than a mere option.

In that moment, you don’t just transform your life; you set in motion a powerful transformational power that affects everyone you are in contact with.

If you still haven’t experienced your life this way, do it now.

Who do you want to be? How do you want to live? When you define a goal, you will be employing the third sphere of meaning. Your goal is definitely going to use the first two spheres inadvertently – you can’t avoid this. A goal sets a direction for you – a direction not left to chance, but cultivated to the best of your knowledge. You might find yourself saying: ‘If I achieve this goal, my life will be awesome.’ Then, aren’t you accepting that you have not only the interest but the duty to succeed?

The pursuit of a fulfilled life begins when you do.