“Success is something you attract by the person you become.” — Jim Rohn
There’s a subtle distinction that comes from the idea of attracting success as a result of the person you become versus chasing success. When you’re focused on attracting to success you basically say to yourself “If I work on myself and take the right steps, good things will happen.” You’re not desperate or overly needy for a certain result to happen at a certain time.
When you chase success, you focus way too much on the results, on what you want, without doing the work it takes to be deserving of success and attract it.
People who chase success are the types to get into get rich quick schemes, cut corners, and dive into projects that they end up quitting shortly after. Since they don’t have intrinsic motivation, they lost momentum as soon as things get hard.
Intrinsic motivation drives you to grow for the sake of growth, which leads you to get the results you want as a byproduct. Viktor Frankl put it well:
“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.
So how do you get what you want without, you know, wanting it? Simple. Just look at your life and your outcomes based more on the actions you take vs the results you get:
- Don’t try to make money from your business, focus on creating a great product that solves a problem
- Don’t try to build an audience, focus on creating the best content possible
- Instead of trying to get people to like you, focus on cultivating a positive and cheerful vibe for the sake of it
Doing things this way makes you more powerful, which creates a smoother path to success.
