What's the difference between success, happiness and achievement....

 ... and falling short of your dreams?

Before reading this item, please take a moment to visualise those people you have seen who are fulfilling their dreams, and those who aren't there yet.

What is the difference between them?

I’d hazard an educated guess that a lot of what you’re seeing in the successful person is in their physical posture.

What do I mean when I say ‘physical posture’?

Let’s face it successful people tend to give-off an aura. It is deeper than just looking confident; they carry themselves differently, they act differently, they think differently and this positive energy is often regarded as ‘attractive’ in much the same way as magnetic energy attracts.

You can always recognise the people who have ‘it’ because they tend to look above the horizon. They aren't looking curled-up in a ball or looking at their feet as if they worry that they’re going to fall down a crack in the pavement. They've no use of superstition because their 'glass is half full' and they’re consistently optimistic. They have faith in what the future holds and stride out towards it proactive, confident and eager.

The Hedgehog Effect: Just like the hedgehog’s instinct to roll-up into a ball, there are times when I have met clients for the first time when they are physiologically and psychologically rolled-up tightly in a ball of self-preservation; as if rolling with punches. Somehow they have lost their faith in the benevolence of the universe and seek to protect themselves from being harmed. I often see clients in this state following long periods of unemployment or experiencing the grief of redundancy. 

There are osteopaths, Bowen therapists, Hellerworkers, and body alignment experts that help release this pent-up anxiety from our bodies. I regularly encounter this physical manifestation of anxiety and stress as it prevails in people who have not experienced fulfilment and meaning in their work because they have yet to piece-together their career attributes to form a sustainable career plan; the people who are still wrestling with themselves to discover their own identities and define their mission in life.

Determination – probability, nature or nurture:

Looking back now, with the luxury of 20/20 hindsight, I survived that difficult transition between childhood, adolescence and adulthood because the activities I was good at fed me an inner strength. In the main, if it wasn't for sport and my love for The Arts, I would have struggled much more.

Deep down inside I knew I possessed positive potential and that it was surely a case of just keeping going and one day I would end-up discovering success, achievement and happiness. It was just a matter of time.

I have no clue where this deep instinct stems from, nurture or nature, but I suppose I am lucky that I sensed it was innate within. A long time ago I came to realise that everyone has an innate talent within; it is just a case of circumstance, perseverance and positivity whether they ever experience the warmth of its glow.

I made a breakthrough in my life when I realised how other people had struggled with the same hurdles I had experienced and when a very kind tutor explained to me how insanely unkind the perfectionist character trait can be because we constantly use it to ensure happiness is always just that inch or two out of reach. He helped me understand that my “good enough, might be equivalent to somebody else’s best”. It was like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders and I never looked back.

It wasn't the past that was going to determine my future…

...it was my decisions in the ‘here and now’

Even though our future course is borne-out of extrapolating the trajectory and themes of our past accomplishments (and failures), potential will always outweigh previous experience; this is how we fuel forward momentum.

How we act upon this potential right now, today governs our future course, our potential for success, happiness and achievement. No great oak ever grew from an acorn that was not 'anchored’. It is a challenging life-lesson to absorb, but our environment is a mirror to our actions. We can influence ‘Darwinian probability’ in the way we represent ourselves to our surroundings as image determines our horizons in life. ‘The expressions we meet on other people’s faces tend to reflect the look we transmit to them’. Hence a sincere smile - reinforced by a self-assured character - is such a disarming weapon in life.

Positivity building-blocks:

As we know from ‘The Secret’, ‘What the Bleep’, and the infinite pool of knowledge on ‘self-help’ and ‘positive thinking’ espoused by visionary thinkers like Dr Norman Vincent Peale, William Clement Stone, and founder of sports psychology Coleman Griffith, there are some essential ingredients to performing well:

• Do what it takes to germinate the magic in desire – get hungry, want to be successful, fill the void with it and use it to launch yourself.
• Strive for Inspiration – find a field you are passionate about otherwise you will never find the motivation necessary to persevere over the long haul.
• Identify where your skills lie. Develop your technique – practice, practice, practice. Hone the attributes you have been ‘given’ until your mastery infects you with conviction and purpose.
•  Disarm your past mistakes out of the same kindness you would bestow on any other young person who was beating themselves up with negativity born from past errors. Move forward and grow from experience. Look forward and outwards not inwards.
• Nurture calm and rejuvenation in your bedroom and turn it in an oasis of calm as it is proven that disrupted sleep exacerbates troubled spirits. Master your thoughts through calmed breathing with inspiring books and tranquil meditation in order to cleanse your mind of the days’ strains.
• Above all enter each day pointing all your faculties at your ‘beacon of purpose’. What is it that you wish to marshal your career attributes towards? Progress is continuous personal development, self-encouragement and confidence-growing; whereas, the stuck, entrenched and stagnant en route to inevitable decline.

Encourage-meant:

Sometimes by providing for others what we actually seek ourselves we are recognising human need. Heartfelt encouragement given to others is an empowering lever in building cohesion, connectedness and cultivating the essential benefits of team-spiritedness and community; especially when we share our successes and goals.

This helpful realisation often comes as a great surprise to my clients, who may have experienced long periods of feeling lonely, isolated and withdrawn, that through their altruism they inject within themselves far more optimism at a time when the natural instinct is to be alone and withdraw. Remember: Respect is very much a 2-way street.

Connecting-with and communing-with others:

The reality is that few champions taste success from the confines of solitude. Achievement, in the main, is built upon united effort, linked with unconditional equality, connected via our ability to depend on others, as it bonds communities invested toward a common good. This is why ‘employee-owned’ organisations like The John Lewis Partnership in the UK do so well – because they share the incentive and the trust.

Very few inward-looking, isolated egocentrics sustain success over the long haul without cultivating more open partnerships with others buying into similar value systems and shared motivations for succeeding. Hence good communications, clear boundaries and respect form the glue that binds every worthwhile success.

Forgiving Mavericks: It’s worth remembering that it can be difficult to find one’s way back into the team dynamic if time has been spent on the periphery. At the same time we should be mindful that the most innovative of minds belong to the most unconventional characters and for them to conform risks amputating their innate brilliance.

Remember real value is borne from invention and invention is disruptive by definition. Sharing achievement is likely to involve adaptability, lateral-thinking, and the occasional ability to forgive a once-adversary who may well be more like you than you’d care to admit! Any such magnanimity requires great maturity. 

Learn to recognise the tiny margins between success and failure:

As is so often the case in this life love/hate, friends/enemies, success/failure are the same coin seen from differing perspectives with the tiniest of fractions differentiating the various viewpoints. Similarly, beware of perfectionism; as it can be a very unrealistic, self-defeating and an overly-rigid trait. [Beware ultimatums as they execute When is our striving for the highest of standards good for us and when is it eroding us away? When is a task finished and when is a task being unnecessarily finessed?

The keystone to happiness is knowing when to stop digging and start constructing; alongside the acceptance that building a life's mission starts with recognising, liking and understanding what talents you possess and appreciating what you’re going to do with them - everyday. Acceptance of what can and can't be changed is elemental.

It might take decades to put the roof on the house of your dreams, but you’re better-off knowing that it is built on firm foundations and that every day you step back to see that the incremental steps, not matter how small, see the walls growing upwards and taking you nearer to your ultimate goal.

A ‘patient summary’:

Perhaps this is why many of our most famous celebrities point-out that it took them a lifetime of error-laden perseverance to become an overnight success! I believe we can only truly measure our success when we can clearly state our values. Only then can we credibly interpret whether our achievements equate to actual success because it is only then that our work is meaningful. 

Concentrated endurance seeds worthy achievement; passion-led talent fuels it.

Duncan Bolam © 2012

The Career Dovetail Formula & Talent Triangles: 

Strengthening wellbeing by dovetailing more people into sustainable careers.

Answers to Unemployment Number 1:

Make a considered career decision first - the job you truly love is far easier to land than the one you don't!

Job Feed My Soul

For many, many years I was despondent at the complete and utter lack of meaning in my career. And I mean despondent. The expectations of others seem to cloud my judgement. In retrospect, I recognise that I was tetchy, arrogant, unfulfilled and in a constant state of unrest.

As my own story goes I lost my dream job at the age of 32 and slammed into the buffers. I became a resident of ‘Skid Row’ and found myself in an utter and complete tailspin. There were one or two occasions where I questioned whether I could even go on. Life was bleak and the day-to-day outlook did not seem to be improving. I was in a rented bedsit, on the dole, on the breadline, living on baked beans and struggling to cope with being what I regarded at the time as ‘down-and-out’. How damaging we can be to ourselves.


In the depths of my despair someone I had previously regarded as a friend for life, a person I held in hugely positive regard, asked me what felt like being a failure. I thought I’d hit rock-bottom, but I soon found out I was wrong. This kick in the teeth knocked me even further down. I saw my ‘friend’ through a different lens. That was December 1994. I remember it well because I lost my job, reputation and roof-over-my-head on 4th December.


I’ve written about it at length elsewhere, but in the interim period I received my first bona fide career guidance interview with an inspirational Adult Career Adviser called Mike, and I owe him a huge debt of gratitude to this day. His guidance compared to that of an alchemist as he took me from the depths of despair and skilfully guided me towards my renaissance.


By the end of the first week in January 1995 my life started to show green shoots like the snowdrops hale the end of dark winter months. That metaphor still works for me all these years later as I watch for the early Spring. The same way my heart skips a beat when I see the first swallow arrive on my horizon. It is these uplifts that feed our soul. Somewhat ironically, I had been accepted onto a postgraduate diploma in Career Guidance and started the rebuild process and germination of the person I knew, deep down, I had the potential to be.


As my friends who knew me before my transformation will tell you, finding my ‘calling’ changed me deeply. And I emphasise that I use the word ‘calling’ in a completely non-Lutheran sense. (I’m no longer a conditioned Christian, as regard myself far more a Holist in my outlook.) What I mean when I say calling is that I tapped into the innate vocation that lives within each and every one of us. My life transformed because every faculty I possess, every life experience, every career attribute, is drawn-upon and channelled daily in my job and repays me the dividend of meaning and fulfilment.


Having done my year’s postgrad I went on to my Probationary Year as a Careers Adviser, relocating to Surrey and working in three mainstream secondary schools and one special needs school. I tapped into a new-found self belief as young people were mirroring my enthusiasm for my job in some form of virtuous circle that spread the dividend outward.


Gradually, the traction came back into my life. In truth, the traction probably entered my life for the first time! As now I had a vocation my identity and self esteem became more strongly anchored. I found where previously people might have regarded as arrogant and argumentative; I became increasingly comfortable in my own skin, peaceable and contented. No longer feeling hunted and forever in pursuit of fulfilling my potential in some far-flung fantasy. I had tapped into my innate strength and it was feeding me.


Nowadays, I see no greater pleasure in my life than guiding others towards tapping into their inner vocation and uncovering the career attributes that can feed their soul. You can see the ‘before and after’ in their eyes. I know what the experience felt like in my own life; like the dark in a cave and the beach on a summer’s day – total contrast! With and without.


I see the eyes of meaning-filled people sparkle with a perpetual intensity that is infectiously charismatic and nurturing; especially craftspeople building tangible products with their hands. These are especially wholesome jobs – the epitome of ‘Career Sustainability’ – career identities that will last for the long haul of a lifetime.


Whereas, people in dead-end, meaningless jobs, and those unfortunate people not to have any work in their lives, can seem soulless and empty; with tapping into the affirming powers of meaningful work instilling that all-important sense of purpose and virtue being the remedy to our quest for the meaning of life.


Working with what you’ve got within in you is invigorating on every level. It truly uplifts the soul and builds the life. The toughest part is placing one’s trust in others to help decode what your calling is because part of being human is that we’re not always very skilled in recognising what we’re best at. Our filters don’t work this way .


Only the weak and faithless perpetuate their lot by never seeking help. The process of reaching out and connecting builds stronger bonds in stronger communities; the more meaning in the community, the more peace everyone enjoys. Life goes on, sustainably.
Feed your soul and others’ today – tap into your career attributes – help others tap into theirs - purpose feeds all of us and lifts our souls.