Every single day that we wake up, breathe and go to work, success is on our mind.
It might be a small thing like cooking our eggs or coffee exactly the way we like. It might be a big thing like winning a six figure contract.
We are always thinking about success in the completion of a task, success in communication, success in goals, success in our wellbeing, success in being fulfilled.
At the end of each day, we all at some point for a moment look back and assess the day as a good one or a bad one, or maybe average.
We have all our own unique set of criteria and measurements of what a good day or a bad day looks like.
Was Christmas and New Year a good or a bad time? Was 2018 a good year or a bad year?
And let’s be honest, we can make up a whole bunch of measures that are far from objective and based on a whole series of connections and patterns we have decided to put together.
We can add up a number of incidents that did not go well and decide they had a momentum that added up to a bad year.
We can connect a number of activities that equate to success, either monetarily or the completion of work, life goals, milestones, and deem the year to be a good one.
The thing is, WE MAKE IT ALL UP! NONE OF IT IS TRUE!
We allow ourselves an unconscious boom and bust mentality about success, about what good looks like and what bad looks like.
And with a constant onslaught of media stories telling us what good looks like, we compare and compete, and let other realities dictate to us what good success and happiness looks like.
All my life, I have been driven to find connections between people. It is my life’s work to connect. I have been blessed with an uncanny ability to see connections, commonalities, patterns and synergies for people that they often do not see themselves. It is my job to focus on that essence, the guts of what we have in common.
When people and groups are in conflict, and in opposition to one another, I see what they share in common, very often when they do not see it themselves.
In a business when there is a breakdown between management and staff, I see what they share in common and what they really care about and value.
When the IT department, the HR department, or the Sales Department or PR Department are at war with one another, I see what they share in common.
I am blessed to have some sort of radar or xray that penetrates these often superficial perceived differences.
In our vastly complex world, we often find ourselves focussing on differences, breakdowns and what is not working. Perhaps we develop or join a group of like-minded people who hold themselves together by being in opposition to another group. We might decide people who like country and western music are good people, and those who like hiphop are bad people.
We might decide that people who like Android phones are good people and people who like iPhones are dumb people.
And so it goes.
So what to do, what to do?
To find fulfilment, happiness and success is to find COMMON GROUND.
COMMON GROUND allows a sense of belonging, and plenty of research tells us that is very good of us, to have a sense of belonging.
If we work together to establish a common language, we can navigate and share common ground.
COMMON GROUND and COMMON LANGUAGE must always be developed and agreed together, that is the point.
There can be differences in how we all see and navigate COMMON GROUND and COMMON LANGUAGE for we are obviously all unique in our identities, preferences and ways of expressing our selves
We are talking more and more about EMPATHY, COMPASSION, and KINDNESS. We can find these in our COMMON GROUND and our COMMON LANGUAGE, when we sit down to focus on what we all have in common.
COMMON GROUND and COMMON LANGUAGE come from our shared values and vision as human beings.
Where ever we are, what ever we do, what ever our circumstance, what we all have in common, without question, is that WE ARE HUMAN BEINGS.
Let’s have 2019 be the beginning of creating success that people care about, that is based on what we have in common as human beings, so that wellbeing, wealth and success are not the preserve of a few at the expense of others.
Let’s embed a greater humanity in all our actions, our interactions, and bring together everything we hold in common as human being to succeed, to be fulfilled, to belong, to be happy, and above all else, TO LOVE AND BE LOVED.