Episode 152: Disappointment and Success - Part 2 - How to Enjoy Success and Learn From It

Welcome to another edition of "Around with Randall" your weekly podcast and making your nonprofit more effective for your community, and here is your host, the CEO and founder of Hallett Philanthropy, Randall Hallett. As always I'm very grateful for your ear and your time to talk a little bit about philanthropy, and on this edition on of "Around with Randall" we cover the second part of success and failure. In part one we talked about failure and how challenging that is and how to deal with it, and I said at the beginning that failure sometimes is the easier of the two to deal with. And I do believe that because today we're going to talk about how to deal with success.

Success can come in a lot of different personal and professional ways. If we think about successes you might think about it professionally in the philanthropy world maybe the office raised the right amount of money, or the total amount of money, or went way over, or a gift officer has a great year, or maybe your evaluation was you're exceeding exponentially expectations that were set out and the goals that were provided or worked on or agreed to by you in the previous year. Maybe it's something that's more personalized, it's a personal best. I think about running, swimming in terms of PRs that's more competitive. Maybe it's just, you're walking or you're running and you're going further, or you're lifting weights or you're doing something and there is success there.

Maybe it's team success. I think about the joy that has come with my son's soccer team that I coach. These, this is not a group of great athletes by any stretch. Great kids but not great athletes. And what they've realized is that when they pull together and they act as a team and take some of the personal out they actually have had some successes, and they deserve the credit for learning that and for the work that they've done. Maybe it's a health success. Maybe you've lost weight. Maybe you've had a long journey with a particular health challenge and you're overcoming it along the lines of the world. That I think of an awful lot of on a personal and professional level, is maybe there's financial success. Maybe you've saved money or you've been able to remodel a house or you've bought a new car, and you've been able to do it in a financially responsible way. It met a goal. All of these are different examples that we live with, hopefully all the time, because success is more fun than failure.

We talked about a this concept of the wheel of emotion with, from Robert Plutchik and the thoughts of that there are eight emotional parts of kind of life and that on the opposite end of a circle are the is the opposite of that particular emotion so we were on the negative side we were on the anger disgust sadness and surprise and if you look across that Spectrum you're dealing with surprise being anticipation that's the opposite and now we're moving to success I'm anticipating this joy that comes from success which is opposite of sadness. Trust in yourself in the process which we'll talk a lot about, or in others that comes with success and fear, and I would tell you that fear is an enormous part of success sometimes. And I look at myself actually. There are some innate fears I have in me that drive me on a regular basis, and fear is the opposite of anger, and so it's almost like risk reward which we'll talk about. This wheel of emotion now we're on the kind of this joy, trust, anticipation side that drives us to happiness so if you have success why is it important to learn from it.

What we know is that habits, when we form them, can be formed either for positive or negative, and that it's these habits that can drive what happens next. And if you have success then learning from why this is happening and kind of evaluating it can actually help replicate more success down the road, and you'll hear me talk about the kind of the six things that I think are important when we think of success but it's a process to evaluate, not just celebrate that evaluation can allow you to figure out kind of what happened.

So from a tactical perspective what are the things that we should do in handling success? Number one, enjoy it. I was always taught by my parents that life is challenging and that there are moments that basically will just stink, will suck, and it just is what it is, and that when good things happen particularly if you're a good person, you should enjoy it and not take it for granted, and I believe in this. You watch a child who succeeds at something and I'll take my kids as an example, my daughter learning how to read in first grade. The joy that comes across her face when she finishes an entire page of a book perfectly is pure, and you might think well gosh I did that so long ago, but I want to celebrate that with her. Now we're not going to go buy a toy or, you know, pre-buy the car or give her money, but celebration doesn't have to be grand it has to be genuine. And a lot of times I'll stop and say that was awesome and I put my hand up to get a high five and she's right there to clap my hand, and it's my way of helping her celebrate that success. Because at six, yes they celebrate, but I don't think they comprehend. I want to reinforce that you did wonderfully and we'll talk of then about the rest how do we replicate that being thankful, being grateful for success. Actually, and I talk about this quite often in healthcare, has positive Health outcomes when we have more gratitude in our life we healthier whether it's better cholesterol, or the idea that we are more able to sleep, or we have better relationships when we're more grateful. We celebrate these successes all the way, and I'm most of you if you've listen know I went to law school. I kind of spent a lot of time talking and thinking and dealing with state issues, studying them in law school and then in my you know 15, 17, or 18 year practitioner career what we used to make a joke about was that if you wanted to live longer make your intent known for an estate gift and share that with the nonprofit, and that was kind of a joke that that would mean you'd live longer because then they can't get it until you pass. Until 2009 when there was a study, and there have been a couple that followed, that people who are grateful and have estate intentions that are philanthropic actually do live longer. It isn't a joke. Celebrating gratitude for what's happened in life actually is a good thing for your emotional state, your health state, your view of the world. So celebrate successes.

In some ways you want to reward yourself. When we deal with kids at least we do, we have small rewards when they do little things. Now there are some things they don't get a reward for at all like when my son takes the trash out on Monday nights there's no reward for that, that's his job. But there are other things that occur and when I coach my soccer team I have a little gift for them at the end of the year, a picture frame of the team. And if it's soccer, some soccer stuff like you know little bouncy balls or erasers or something, but I tell them I want to thank them for their great work for the year and I hope that they'll come back, not because we're all that good but because it's great for them to learn and to about teamwork and adversity and how to communicate with each other, and how they can improve, and what it takes to mean it takes to do that, or create that, or to actually realize that improvement. Reward yourself. In this same vein I just said have gratitude and reward yourself, I would also advise to stay somewhat humble.

success is temporary. This kind of gets into the conversation, and I've talked about it on previous podcasts, the difference between joy and happiness, happiness is great but it's usually because of something that happened in, as an outside influence and is more temporary. Joy happens internally and it's usually predicated on you doing something. And success is more along the lines of happiness unless you can make it repetitive, and humility is a part of

that. Be thankful. Don't be afraid to be appreciative and to celebrate a little bit. Those successes, the bigger the success the bigger the celebration. So that's the first.

Number two, I believe in thanking others. Very few times are the successes we realize or we accomplish in life come in isolation. Even in the most individualized sports if I use that as an example, tennis or golf, I mean there's only one person out there, you are responsible for you, right? Wrestling. There were people who helped you get there. Anything that we do, we want, if we want to embrace success is to offer thanks to those who helped. You get there to share it, to be generous, and it doesn't have to be grand gestures. One of the greatest things I get in the mail every once in a while, which takes not a lot of energy but has a great deal of meaning are thank you notes, not for gifts like it and I appreciate when my nephew and or my nephews write me little notes of thanks at Christmas after Christmas for the Christmas gifts that's wonderful, but it's from professionals who say thank you for helping me get to where I'm at. I was at, recently, a conference where I was in my booth and a woman comes up I've never seen this woman before, I don't know this woman, and she says you're Randall and I said yes I am, it's nice to meet you. And she says, I want to show you something, and she holds up her phone and she goes I listen to your podcast every week. It's one of the best things I do and I want to show you what my favorite episodes are. That was one of the most humbling moments I've had in a long time. I don't do this podcast to glorify myself or to really, I don't even know how many people listen. I do it because I like to teach. And then to have someone come back and say this meant something was incredibly, incredibly meaningful. How do I share that with others? I told my wife. I said' thanks for letting me do what I do. It's not easy, sometimes, for her when I'm on the phone at 6:00 in the morning and and we're adjusting school schedules, or in Australia at night. I I appreciate her. I want her to share in that. I, so I told her the story. I said hey you were part of this. Number two is thank others.

Number three probably the most important is an evaluation of the process. I am a Nebraskan by birth and by by lineage in being a fifth generation, and thus for many of us particularly those older than 20, we're Nebraska football fans. And those of us that are old enough to remember when we actually used to be good, maybe someday that'll return, but what I appreciated most in the longtime coach Tom Osborne is he always would talk about that it was more important in the process of what it meant to be a great team than it was actually in the victories. What did you put into it to achieve success? And he would write it down and he had practice schedules and I think that if you think about John Wooden, and I love sports, but John Wooden when it came to basketball in UCLA in the in the 1960s and 70s, winning 1011 championships. My wife's a musician by by her education and training and she would tell you that there were certain ways she would practice that brought her that success daily. I think sometimes we think that success just happens and it usually doesn't. That you did things that made success possible and the key is not to get complacent after the success and look back and realize what did it take for me to get here, and usually that was daily goals, daily improvement, daily investment in yourself, in your process, in what you believe in. Working with others, this goes back to the concept that success in the end is temporary, but the process to get to it is something you can control most of the time and that's where success lives. If you're a gift officer and you had a great year, be honest and look and say why did I have such a good year, what were the things that made it possible. If you lost weight what were the things that made that feasible? If you've achieved a financial goal, what were the things that made that realization occur? Those are the things that actually are most important. That's the process, and you hear me talk about it in podcast. I do it certainly with clients that I'm such a process-oriented person from when I do grateful patient builds, there is a process. Campaign feasibility studies, there's a process. How I coach the soccer team for my my 10-year-old son, there's a process. This podcast, there's a small process, but everything I do is kind of process-oriented. In some ways that makes me boring but I'm okay with that. That's how I know I'm getting done. If you can't write down the things that allowed you to be successful then maybe success found you rather than you finding success. And if you have found success, write down the process so you can repeat it, and what you'll find is Success occurs more often.

Number four is an evaluation of you've reached success. Is this really what you want. Is there more? Could you do more? Is more worth it? And by the way, asking the question was this success worth it, sometimes we look back and say maybe it wasn't or at least all of it. I work really hard. I think we all work hard, but I work a lot of hours. I work six and a half days a week. I love what I do, but I'm always fighting with myself about is any success that I'm fortunate enough to have professionally, on the other side, is my family life and the only people that really matter to me in this world and the legacy that I have, I don't know how long these podcasts will last. I don't think the clients will last that long in terms of what I teach them. It's why Consulting keeps going and going. My legacy is my kids. How do I balance that? Is it worth it? Do I need to set new goals? So asking the question, is there more? Is this enough? Did I get everything out of it that I wanted, is important. And there'll be times where you'll say no, I want to do something different next time.

Number five is just a realization that that everybody's not going to be happy for you. If you achieve something, if you won the lottery that's pretty big success for most people. How you handle it after that is not for this podcast, but even in that circumstance there be people who won't be happy for you, so realize that success most of the time is a personal journey. Now if you're lucky enough to do something as a team, sports, office, whatever, then you can celebrate that together and frankly I think that's even more fun when you do it with other people. But everybody won't be happy for you. And there's a term I heard long ago, it's not mine, I didn't make it up but I think it who's your brag buddy. So if it's a team who in that group can you brag to, say isn't this awesome, aren't we just, we're just killing it. It doesn't affect your relationship or they're a part of the of the journey and they're happy for you. Or if you're doing something solo you can trust them and say they genuinely want the best for me because humility is a part of this equation, and not talking about it. Other people will get jealous. Other people won't care. Other people just won't like it. Other people be mad that they didn't get it. Be careful who you trust and find a limited group that will celebrate with you so that you can enjoy the success yourself. If you're really good, and I'm not sure I've got this one down, but I believe in it, teach others the things you learned in the journey of to success. Teach them how to do it. That's a gift. I don't want to hand my kids whatever fortune in life they have. What I want to do is teach them how to get there themselves, which brings me to my last point.

Success can be a great lesson but the best lessons in life actually happen in failure. we learn more with failure. We realize more with failure. We change to the better with failure, and what I would love to know from these two pieces or these two podcasts is that you can learn from the things we talked about in failure and how to overcome, and then take the successes and learn the patterns that came with them and celebrate them and know who to trust with them so that you can do more of them. And you put the two together and that's how you achieve, in life, personally, or professionally. Failure and success are intertwined. They may have been two podcasts but they're not two separate things. The key is to use them to your advantage the best you can to be the best that you can personally or professionally, and whatever is important to you.

Don't forget check out the blogs at Hallettphilanthropy.com - two a week 90 second reads, just different thoughts of things I read and see. And if you'd like to get a hold me that's podcast@hallettphilanthropy.com. Nonprofit work's important. We make a difference, you make a difference, every day some people make things happen, some people watch things happen, then there are those who wondered what happened, my all-time favorite saying. Philanthropy is all about people making things happen for the things in life, the people, the organizations, things in our community that are wondering what happened. Difference makers, philanthropy, love of mankind, that definition, that's what you do every day. And I'm hoping your failures can help you get closer, and your successes get you closer so that you can be everything you want to be at home, at work, and anywhere in between. I'll look forward to seeing you next time right back here on another Edition of "Around with Randall" and don't forget make it a great day.