Is Your Pursuit of Success Hindering Your Flourishing?

What does it mean to live an excellent life? While many equate excellence with achievements and productivity, this episode challenges these conventional notions of success. Through personal reflection and insight, we explore a transformative perspective on excellence that goes beyond the superficial metrics celebrated in today's society. Many individuals, despite adhering to societal prescriptions for success, find themselves in a state of dissatisfaction, which prompts a critical examination of what it truly means to flourish. Throughout this episode, I will share three pivotal insights that have reshaped my understanding of excellence, emphasizing the importance of embracing life's unpredictability, cherishing the journey, and cultivating a foundation of virtue. Join me as we embark on this enlightening exploration, seeking not only to redefine excellence but also to foster a more authentic and fulfilling existence.

Craig Van Slyke's exploration into the essence of an excellent life reveals a critical reassessment of contemporary values surrounding success and fulfillment. Through his own experience of feeling overwhelmed by academic productivity metrics, he illustrates how easy it is to fall into the trap of equating self-worth with external validations. Through personal anecdotes and reflective insights, he emphasizes the necessity of stepping back from a life dictated by rigid goals and societal pressures. He proposes that living excellently involves nurturing one's character and virtues—qualities such as kindness, justice, and wisdom—which form the bedrock of genuine fulfillment. This episode encourages listeners to engage in self-reflection and to redefine their pursuits, emphasizing that the journey towards excellence lies in appreciating the richness of life experiences rather than solely in tangible achievements.

Takeaways:

• Living an excellent life requires us to redefine our understanding of success beyond mere productivity.
• Excellence is not a planned event but rather an emergent quality that develops over time.
• The act of experiencing life fully enriches our existence and contributes to true excellence.
• A foundation of virtue is essential for leading an excellent life, guiding our actions and decisions.
• Regular reflection on what excellence means to us personally is crucial for authentic growth.
• True excellence emerges when we prioritize being excellent individuals rather than merely achieving external success.

https://www.livewellandflourish.com/

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
What does it mean to live anexcellent life? If you're like most
people, you might think it'sabout achieving more, doing more,
being more productive. I usedto think that too, but today I'm
going to challenge that notionof excellence and share a perspective
that transformed how I thinkabout living well. If you've been
feeling unsettled anddissatisfied despite doing all the

(00:21):
right things, today's episodemight help you understand why and
show you a different path forward.
Welcome to Live well andFlourish, where I help you understand
what it means to live aflourishing life. I'm your host,

(00:44):
Craig Van Slyke. If you'reready to think beyond material.
And external success, ifyou're ready to.
Take control of who you areand the kind of life you live, if
you're ready to flourish, thisis the podcast for you.
We seem to live in a grindculture based on productivity and
external measures of success.This may or may not be a good way

(01:05):
to get rich, but it's aterrible way to live. And it is certainly
not a recipe for an excellentlife. I've been thinking a lot about
this lately. Just recently, Ijoked with my wife, Tracy, that I
needed to go back to being adean so I wouldn't have to work so
much. To those of you whomight not be familiar, the life of
an academic dean is incrediblybusy and stressful, especially when

(01:27):
compared to the life of atenured full professor, which is
the highest rank a professorcan have. It occurred to me that
I may have become too focusedon external measures of success.
For an academic, that's oftennumbers of journal articles and articles
in top journals. Frankly, Iproduce much more than what's required
of me or even of what'sexpected of me. This focus on externals

(01:51):
is causing me a fair amount ofstress and fatigue. I'm in a constant
state of tired. Sometimes Ieven feel guilty taking time out
of my day to play with thepups. That is not a good thing. So
it was time for reflection.I'd lost my way a bit on my path
towards flourishing. Therewere a few outcomes from my reflections.

(02:14):
First, I realized that Ineeded to make some changes to create
more space to enjoy life. I'lltalk more about that over the next
few weeks. But something morefundamental struck me. So many of
us try to plan out our lives,seeking a perfect recipe for living
an excellent, flourishinglife. My epiphany is that such a

(02:35):
recipe just doesn't existother than as a recipe for disappointment.
I started thinking more aboutthis. If there isn't a recipe for
excellence. How can peoplelive excellent flourishing lives?
Through this period ofreflection, I've discovered some
fundamental truths aboutexcellence that might help you on
your own journey. Here arethree key insights that have changed

(02:59):
how I think about living anexcellent life. An excellent life
is emergent, not a plannedevent. Goals, interim goals, strategic
life plans, time blocking. Allof these may have their place, but
they're all focused onexternal aspects of life and on external
measures of excellence. That'snot the real path to excellence.

(03:22):
These external measures andplans may be necessary in modern
life, but they're not going toguide you to a truly excellent life.
Think of your life as agarden, not a blueprint. You can
cultivate it, nourish it, butthe precise beauty that emerges can't
always be predicted. And thatunpredictability is exactly what

(03:43):
makes life so rich. Anexcellent life is not engineered.
One of the things myreflection revealed is that I'm not
taking enough time or givingenough attention to enjoying the
journey. This is a bit ironicsince I've written about this before
and I know better, quotingJames Taylor. The secret to life
is enjoying the passage oftime. As I've found out, it's easy

(04:07):
to get caught up in the treesand not enjoy the forest or something
like that. The point is thatan excellent life is enriched by
the act of experiencing andappreciating every aspect of life.
Experience life, don't justgrind through it. An excellent life
is built on a foundation ofvirtue. I cannot overstress how critical

(04:31):
this is. Work on being thekind of person you want to be. What
virtues make someone a goodperson? Courage, kindness, wisdom,
justice, Temperance isdifferent for you than it is for
me. Philosophy and religioncan guide your thinking here, but
everyone has to determine whatit means to be an excellent person
for themselves, including you.This is the sort of planning you

(04:54):
should do. What is your planfor being an excellent human who
lives an excellent life? So Ichallenge you right after this episode.
Take 5 minutes to reflect onyour own definition of excellence.
Are you pursuing externalmeasures of success at the expense
of genuine excellence? Are youover engineering your life rather

(05:16):
than letting your life ofexcellence emerge? Do you know what
kind of person you want to beand what virtues you want to guide
your life? These are deepquestions that require considerable
reflection. They're not easy,but they're questions that are critical
to understanding how you canlive an excellent life. Remember,

(05:37):
true excellence isn'tsomething you achieve. It's something
that emerges when you focus onbeing excellent and experiencing
life fully. Until next time,stay Excellent, my friends.