Is This What Success’s All About
This space has been starting to get really cool.
People are working really hard to change their lives and do cool things with their time. Today is another moment that shows the hard work from someone in our community. Jonny from TheLifeThing.com has brought together 30 young (and young at heart) entrepreneurs, lifestyle designers and change agents together under one roof to remind us that we all have very ambitious and very different goals, dreams and ideas of success (more on Johnny in a few).
The physical images of success are playing right now on my tv. It’s Grammy time and you can see all the artists, high end fashion and expensive production that goes with getting Lady Gaga, Elton John and 2 pianos in the same room. For some, this is the epitome of success. Money, things, highly influential and powerful circle of friends and the big house with the lake.
For others, success is being able to spend time with family, work on projects they truly care about or even having a job that is stable and able to provide for the lifestyle they are enjoying being a part of.
For Nikki Stone, success was being able to overcome adversity and win Olympic gold. Two years before becoming America’s first gold medal winner in aerial skiing, Nikki suffered a chronic spinal injury that prevented her from standing. She was determined to see her vision of success. She worked hard and 35 World Cup Medals, 11 World Cup titles, 4 national titles, a World Championship and Olympic gold later - Nikki has seen ad experienced success.
Nikki has shared her vision of success in her new book, When Turtles Fly. In the book she chronicles her story of success along with the success of others like Shaun White (who took home more gold at the X Games this past week), 49′ers legend Steve Young, author Steven Covey and others.
What I like about this approach is that you can take bits and pieces of the lives of others and put them into your own life. This is something I learned from Tony Robbins and his modeling approach. If you want something, essentially all you need to do is find someone who has done it and model their actions, beliefs and mental approach.
The title of this post comes from a line in an nontraditional song about success from Jay-Z and Nas. For them success came at an even greater level when they came together, put their past behind them and regained their focus on making the best music in their genre. In the song Jay boats about an “apartment at the Trump” that he only slept in once. Nas goes on to say something that I think hits the lifestyle community,
I climax from paper, then ask why is life worth livin’
Is it the hunt for the shit that you want
To receive is great, but I lust giving
In true spirit Jonny Gibaud has come together in a project about bringing people together and giving back to the commuity and for those that need a little dose of what “success’s all about.”
30 bloggers, lifestyle designers and change makers have given their definition of success, but more importantly how they think you are to achieve it. You will see some familiar faces like Ashley from the Middle Finger Project, Jun from Viralogy and Untemplater, Gordie at LifestyleDesignForYou, Cody from Thrilling Heroics, myself and a ton of others!
You can download the eBook for free, right now. Pass it on and hear about success from the people that are defining success, one unique story at a time.
So what do I think of success? Well, when I sent in my comments for the Success eBook, here was my response:
Success is…
creating a lifestyle that allows you to surf on a tuesday and save the world on a friday
Achieve this by…
working harder, smarter and more passionately than anyone you know and smiling while you do it
Go learn about success from Nikki and read about it in Jonny’s new eBook. This is going to be a killer successful week. Who’s with me?
-Greg
P.S. Yup, that’s an affiliate link to Nikki’s book and I did receive a promotional copy of the book. It’s a great read if you want to see success in a new light. I was also a contributor to the Success eBook. It really rocks and costs you an afternoon of reading and getting inspired.
Great post mate and thanks for being apart of the SUCCESS Ebook.
Thanks for putting it together man! Hope the downloads are coming and people like the content! Good work bro.
Hey Greg,
I think Jonny did a great job managing to get together approximately 30 cool bloggers and myself to take part. I enjoyed reading all of the other bloggers’ thoughts on what they think success is and how to achieve it. I hope it goes viral for him. It’s cool that he didn’t ask for an email address either, so it may have a chance.
Have a great week!
Yea - I am always up in the air about the email thing. On one had it gets the info spreading faster and with no restraints. On the other hand if you get the email you know have a list that you can keep updated with new projects, etc.
Personally - I’d do the email thing, but that’s the Internet Marketer in me. Hope the book does well for Jonny, he deserves it.
Greg, I’m liking the mantra. Lets catch up tonight.
Yep, work hard and have a vision for where you want to be in 5 to 10 years. Thought it pretty funny that you were posting something about Nas and Jay-Z, but I suppose they had to work hard to get where they are too.
Nas and Jay are 2 figures of how the public portrays success. Young, powerful, inspirational and wealthy. It doesn’t hurt that I’m a hip-hop head and a big fan.
I think the point of bringing them into the post was to show that we can have different opinions of success and that’s ok. For Jay, he loves to go big - from marketing to owning the Nets and his bars and restaurants. Nas likes to stay humble, make great work and have people appreciate that.
For other success may just be having the ability to feed their kids or send them to a great school.
It’s all mental, success that is. Thanks for chiming in.
Congratulations Greg for you participation in the Success eBook. Your words about how to achieve success is very inspiring.
“Working harder, smarter and more passionately than anyone you know and smiling while you do it.”
I will remember this.
Hey Walter - it’s one thing to remember and another to do. If you truly outwork your competition, there is no stopping you!
Thanks for stopping by and keep me posted on what you are up to.
Great post. That definitely sounds like an interesting read. Nikki Stone has a really inspiring story.