Having a Summer for Success amidst it all

If you know me, you know I love a theme, always have. I planned parties and noteworthy weekends in high school, college, and beyond, adorned with well-crafted names, concepts, and wardrobe directions. Each calendar year, I like to work with an annual mantra (reach out and I'll tell you this year's). Even different seasons get special recognition (a reminder that we’re half-way to the next Reckless December), and summers are no exception. Therefore, I welcome you to this summer's theme coined by a few friends and me  – welcome to *Summer for Success*.

Being well over a month into (mostly unofficially) summer, I see examples galore of the two-sided nature of success. On the one hand: Truly all of my coaching clients are kicking ass — transforming limiting beliefs into fruitful action, quitting jobs with gusto (cue “Break My Soul”), landing big opportunities, and discovering the power of collective grief practice (to name a few). Some amazing candidates prevailed over the status quo in LA and worldwide. So many seeds I’ve planted over the past year now feel ripe, yielding lots of abundance. After a few years of contraction, my circles of humans are expanding again (hi all you peeps new to this newsletter!), and I see people in my orbit growing and glowing in such gorgeous ways.

Then there’s the other side of success. We are witnessing the sheer magnitude of the political right-wing's “success” in eviscerating our ability to live in healthy bodies and lead healthy lives, ever-widening the gap of who gains access and those who are denied it. There’s “success” being achieved by a select few raking in unimaginably larger-than-ever profits, as nearly everyone else grows more pained by inflation and price gauging. We're more prone than ever to a virus whose latest mutation makes it much more "successful" at spreading through us. Need I say more.

All of this suggests to me that success holds a lot of power. And that success need not be a zero-sum game. In fact, I say if our success rests upon others not succeeding, it’s time to hit the breaks and consider what kind of definition of success we’re clinging to. And better yet, who’s definition of success we’re allowing to run our script. I’m thus teaching and preaching a summer for success – with my coaching clients, in my workshops, to my loved ones, and for myself – where success is about cultivating what sustains us.

This definition invites us to sit with and inquire into what is that which sustains us — and as a result, what’s not enough for us, what’s actually too much, and where we can shed toxic notions of success we’ve bought into along the way. This reminds me of Roshi Joan Halifax’s book Standing On the Edge. In the book, she describes several qualities that are “key to a compassionate and courageous life,” such as altruism, empathy, and engagement. But when we take any of these too far, she writes, we can “fall over the edge” into states of clinging, distress, and burnout. Aka, when “success” becomes over-conditional. When nothing lands as good enough. Or when we feel others have to be denied something or we have to rig an entire system in order to achieve success (cough SCOTUS cough).

“We have a responsibility to model receiving and giving in ways that will truly sustain us, all of us – not less than what’s sustaining, and also not much more than what’s sustainable.”

I’ve long wrestled with coaching (and the coaching industry) because of this. I often see coaches who promote the idea that there are no limits to how much money and influence clients can incur, and lead practices where there’s no such thing as too much. I get why this excites people (it’s called internalized capitalism!), and for the record I am so here to help people make big bold moves and get that money  you deserve. But I also believe as practitioners we have a responsibility to our clients and the whole world to model receiving and giving in ways that will truly sustain us, all of us – not less than what's sustaining, and also not much more than what's sustainable.

In making this summer all about success, a.k.a. all about that which sustains us, I’m drawn to something Claire Willis (author of Opening to Grief: Finding Your Way from Loss to Peace) recently wrote to Rachael Freed (Life Legacies): “We cannot turn away from what sustains us or we will implode in sorrow.”

In times like these, where sorrow implosion is all too tempting, may we offer and receive the kinds of sustenance that move us to dance in rhythm with our own healthy definitions of success.

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