Hippie CEO Life #31 - Stop Chasing Results
November 11, 2022
“At Patagonia, making a profit is not the goal because the Zen master would say profits happen 'when you do everything else right'.” ~Yvon Chouinard
Yesterday, as i was triaging my inbox, i opened up an email from Substack with the subject line of ‘Introducing the Substack Bestseller badge - A check mark worth paying attention to’, a way to highlight the most popular authors on the platform, and my instant reaction was, “Wow, this is such a horrible idea.”
And apparently, i was not alone. Reading comments, under the message from the Substack team on this new ranking system, i found hundreds of similar comments:
This isn’t to say that profits are bad, that being a best selling author is bad, that being voted the best place to work is bad, that winning the best agency award is bad. However, when those things become your goal, when those rankings, awards, recognitions are what drives you, you will end up creating nothing of great worth. And worse yet, you will end up being miserable along the way, because there isn’t enough recognition in the world that will fulfill your desire to be recognized.
Recognition becomes a drug that you can never get enough of.
When the outcome becomes your goal, your sole focus, you become an addict, where chasing the high of the goal is the only thing that matters and it matters not what it takes to get that goal.
When we focus on our craft, when we focus on creating value for other’s, when we have a purpose, recognition is sure to follow.
So what is your purpose? To make a profit? To win an award? To earn a badge? To have a lot of followers?
If you said yes to any of those things, it’s time to stop and reevaluate because those things are not a purpose, they are results.
As Simon Sinek puts it, “Profit isn't a purpose, it's a result. To have purpose means the things we do are of real value to others.”
If you want increased happiness, if you want increased business success, if you truly want to be fulfilled doing what you love to do, stop chasing results and start focusing on purpose — the results will follow.
