Success isn’t always fun, says Srini Pillay, M.D., CEO of NeuroBusiness Group, an assistant clinical professor at Harvard Medical School, and a teacher in the Executive Education Program at Harvard Business School. For some people, finding success increases worries that they’ll fail in the future. However, there are strategies for getting out of this mindset.
Pillay, writing on the Harvard Business Review blog, offers the following suggestions to help you enjoy your success.
Avoid Victory Laps
“Learn to moderate when and where you express happiness about your success. Share the good news with other successful people. And focus your conversation on other things you are developing when you are succeeding so as not to annoy people.”
Focus on Value, Not Winning
“When we win, we assume that others will feel similarly, as we project our own feelings onto them. This fear may be unconscious or conscious and may disrupt our confidence, causing anxiety about the effect of our success on other people.”
Be in the Moment
“…stop overthinking the success. Focus on the ‘here and now.’ Let go of worrying about the future and rationalizing the past. Obsession with the past can be distracting and is not always helpful. Also, it will prevent you from clearing your mind.”
Aim Higher
“When you have mastered something, ask yourself: How you can innovate around this? Watch out for your own boredom as it can lead you to sabotage yourself, and also watch out for reactive lateral shifts in job hierarchy simply to escape your boredom of mastery.”
“Even when we consciously want to be successful, enjoying that success can be a challenge,” Pillay wrote. “By following the suggestions above, you can create a framework for managing success so that you can more reliably sustain your success when it occurs.”
Pillay’s post is a good one, and I recommend you read it for a more in-depth discussion about each suggestion.
(photo credit: Scrap Pile via photopin cc)
