Pure Success: Success Free of UnWholesome Additives.

“I want to be Successful.” I told my Coach.

She asked, “What does success mean to you?”  She wanted me to define it.

But I had no patience for that, I knew what it was, and whatever it was, I wanted it.

I knew I wanted to make a lot of money, a lot more money than I was making. I knew I wanted my work to be well-recognized and my coaching practice and workshops to be full. I wanted to be a leader, on stage, with followers.

I wanted to be rich, to be able to buy whatever I wanted and entertain my high-quality (aka. expensive) tastes. I wanted to learn, grow, evolve and be on the leading edge. I wanted to own my own company and to be free to spend my time as I wished. I wanted to have great health and vitality.

And I wanted to be admired for all of the above.

“And if you had all of that, what would that give you?”

My coach was pressing me to go deeper, to the core of why I wanted this success. But I was having none of it.

I don’t remember my reply, but it was dismissive, and I managed to evade her line of questioning.

It is only now, 10 years later, that I see the wisdom that she had, that I didn’t. I know that the younger me was incapable of really understanding the value that she was attempting to give me in that moment.

I know that I needed to go through the long and twisted road of pursuing ‘Success’ in order to realize that it was an empty goal from the start.

And I am grateful that I walked that long, windy road, to come out the other side more lucid, humble and sober for it…and with a new definition and understanding of success.

The hidden drivers underlying your ambition will drive you to take action and create outer results until they are fed and satisfied… but therein lies the lie…they will never be satisfied.

If your hidden drive is to make money and to be free, the more money you make, the less free you will feel. The bar will always go higher. There will always be something else that you need to be free. Something more.

Your hidden drivers are hungry ghosts, to use a term I heard from my colleague Tad Hargrave. They are fears that feed on fears that feed on fears.  They live in the shadows, and the shadows keep them alive.

Meanwhile they are running the show. You are a puppet to your hidden drivers until you bring them to the light of your awareness.

Why? Because these drivers are made up of the fabric of ‘you’…your egoic, separate self. The part of you that identifies as Karen, Louise, Joe. That ‘you’ also runs on fear.

That separate ‘you’ seeks to reinforce itself and make it’s structure stronger…so that it doesn’t just vanish, *poof*, like the illusion it is.

A flimsy thing, this self, it needs all of your energy resources to shore up it’s strength and importance.

Exactly what fear your egoic separate self is made up of depends on your unique make-up.  You can discover your primary egoic driver by taking the Flow Archetype Quiz.

In the quiz, and the Love Sex Genius Model, I identify 6 primary Egoic Drivers, and their corresponding antidote, or path to freedom.  They are as follows…as you read them, I invite you to notice where you see yourself.

Anti-Dote

Oneness Consciousness: Merging with all-that-is and dissolving the illusion of the separate self is your path to freedom. In doing so, you find humility.

Most of us are blind to these hidden egoic drivers because they are masked by strong desires, which seem altruistic, positive and life-affirming.

And mostly, our desire for success is a mash-up of the creative impulse of life-force running through us, and hidden egoic fears.

How do you know your success is being driven by hidden egoic drivers? 

You feel it.

Stress. Low energy. Hyper-energy. Disharmonious, neglected relationships. Health problems. Burn-out. A soul-sucking sense that you are squandering your precious life. Inability to wind-down. Body-tension. Anxiety. Sleepless nights. Overwhelm. Being over-committed. Sense of lack of time.

These are some of the symptoms. The bottomline is if you are experiencing an underlying sense of dissatisfaction in any of the realms of Love (relationships), Sex (vitality/health) or Genius (work), then your success is off-kilter and probably driven from an egoic/fear-based motive somewhere.

Listen, I’m not trying to make you into a saint, or expecting you to be a perfect human. Running on fear is actually a part of the very fabric of being a human…and it’s to be expected, par for the course.

However, there comes a time when your dissatisfaction/discomfort reaches it’s limit.

When you reach that limit you might be tempted to say, as I did, “Fuck it!  I wanted to know and live the TRUTH, above all else. Come what may.”

When finding and living according to your truth becomes a higher priority than anything else, you are ready to live into “Pure Success”.

Why?  Because the truth liberates your dharma, your life path. Truth purifies you of the fearful underlying motives of the separate self and engages in you a deeper purpose, to serve the will of Life itself.

Pure success is a success free of the underlying motive of the egoic drivers.  It arises when you have clearly seen and actively purified your self of the Egoic Drivers, so that your underlying motive is nothing more or less than allowing Life to flow through you, as it will.

In this way, you become free to flow through all realms of love, sex and genius.

You are not solely fixed in one realm but you fluidly engage in all aspects of your life, as they are called to your attention. You equally value and prioritize your relationships (love), your vitality (sex) and your work (genius).

You don’t over-work, over-commit or over-do…because you are tuned into the naturalness of your body. Your body speaks to you when you are reaching your limit of what compromises your aliveness.

You don’t over-give to others because this saps your creativity. You feel immediately when your creative connection is running dry and you put your attention back to yourself, to fill your own cup.

You don’t lose yourself in addictions and feel-good pleasures because you can feel how that dulls your connection to brilliance and you love being in your zone of genius.

You don’t get selfishly absorbed in fueling your own sexual vitality because that starts to feel empty pretty quickly, and you know that your vital connection to life-force is here to be used in service.  You want to give.  

You don’t care too much about how you look because you know your worthiness extends much beyond what you create and how it appears to others. You create because that is God moving through you, not because you want to magnetize attention.

You listen to others and stay humble in your brilliance, because you know that the Genius within you is a God-given blessing that comes through you as a gift. And you share it fully and with humility as best as you can.

Pure Success values and expresses all realms of life (love, sex, genius) equally and fluidly.

Ironically, it is in surrendering ourselves to the will of Life and releasing the petty desires of the egoic, separate “me”, that the conditions for pure success arise naturally.

And more important than any outer condition, we are no longer living in dissatisfaction. All of life takes on a sweetness.

We are in flow.  And our flow becomes a liberating, inspiring force for others to make the same transition.

Join me this Sunday, August 5th for a deeper exploration of Pure Success and the Flow Archetypes.  I am offering a free online “Open house” workshop on the topic of Pure Success. Read about it and register here.

I help Type A Hippies to get into flow in all three realms of Love, Sex and Genius.