HUMAN
Marco’s Insights
Marco Houwen contribue fréquemment à Trans-for-Nation Magazine en partageant sa vision et son expérience de la pratique d'un leadership authentique et holistique.
November 28, 2022
Continuous success as the key to your fulfilment
I grew up in the old paradigm of business. We had an innate understanding that success was a fixed goal to attain. To get there, the only way was to be hyper-focused on the objective. For me, this translated into 15 hour workdays and neglecting any life outside my professional occupation.
I was proud of this eternal tiredness and such a tremendous workload. Each year I longed for these 2 weeks of vacation in summer just to work half of the time anyhow.
And yes, this paradigm represented my success in the eyes of others. But it didn’t create the inner fulfilment and continuous success I was looking for.
You know the kind of continuous success, the one that sets us up for a conscious path, driven by intention to enjoy and embrace the journey as much as we enjoy the accomplishments.
Just setting goals in our lives often overshadows the journey towards their achievement. How many entrepreneurs do you know (maybe even yourself) who suffer internally from the stress, unknowns and loneliness that too many roles entail.
When I was a young entrepreneur, 20 years ago, I had the opportunity to meet one of my entrepreneurial role models at the time. During our conversations he explained how successful he was and stated: “It took me 4 divorces to get to where I am, but man am I successful!”
Even then I asked myself: is this really the success I strive for?
Is the aim really to achieve our goals through a suffering process or might there be a way to enjoy the ride?
The real challenge is to overcome external- only results that society expects from us as the norm simply because we are too lazy to ask the questions that really drive us and keep us curious.
Rarely do we express our need for internal success which far too often is cast into the darkness of self-doubt, fear and frustration.
One way out of the struggle between external and internal success is through combining an intention with a clear objective. Continuously setting intentions, based on who we are now and who we want to be during the process, is the key to living a fulfilled life aligning all aspects of our existence.
You might say now: “The way to hell is paved with good intentions, Marco.”
And I totally agree with you but only when we use intentions as a pretext to not getting in action for ourselves.
The trick lies in what kind of intentions I am setting for myself.
There are two kinds of intentions: “do” intentions and ”be” intentions.
Be intentional and achieve your objectives with grace
A “do” intention is for example: “This year I will only smoke half a pack of cigarettes per day” or “In my meetings I want all my colleagues to share their work openly.”
The challenge with these intentions is that we are referring to something we want to achieve and is actually not very different from a goal and not surprisingly it generally does not work.
A “be” intention always links a state of mind or an emotion to your intention, like: “I want to be curious, professional and compassionate” or “I will hold me to my highest standards of integrity.”
Combining your goals with “be” intentions allows you to pave your way to continuous success:
“I will hold myself to my highest standards of integrity and make my company the most successful in the industry!”
or
“To create the most inspired and innovative team we are curious, professional and compassionate!”
Continuous success can only manifest itself when an intention is linked to a goal that you believe in (or just a notch beyond 🙂 ).
I invite you to Be intentional and achieve your objectives with grace.
Marco Houwen has long been the “Internet and Cloud guy” in Luxembourg. His atypical career of more than 20 years in ICT led him onto his path today where he supports leaders at the heart of their entrepreneurial process. He does this as a strategic life coach for senior executives and entrepreneurs. Marco frequently contributes to Trans-for- nation sharing insight and his experience for practicing authentic and holistic leadership in a turbulent, disoriented world.