Why do I believe that I have an expectancy mindset of $ in my career?
Because I’ve seen in so many places that money is a lagging indicator of success that society has implied as a leading indicator. I know that money will come if I continue to do what makes me happy. Money is just a proxy for happiness. That’s been said in enough places by enough people so nothing to add there.
But I think I actually follow that advice. There’s the concept that the Universe will give you enough and only enough as many challenges or obstacles as you can handle. In the same vain, I will have as much money as I need to survive. So there’s no need to force the issue on trying to make more money at the expense of my fulfillment.
Some people find fulfillment by working hard and being tired after a long day of work. Like that’s what resonates with them and how they’ve found success.
Which is 100% valid. In my life, most things have fallen in my path and I’ve taken that as a sign of what I should follow. I’ve followed the path of least resistance and I’ve found fulfillment in that. And not that saying from a perspective of doing the easy thing. And not wanting to put in the work. I’m saying I will put in the energy if I find something to be worth my time. Things are effortless. So it doesn’t feel like I’m even putting in effort because it’s my natural state of being and operation.
What are the other actual lagging indicators that society has gauged as leading indicators?
From what I found through using the Organization Operating System, leading and lagging indicators are just that based on context. Revenue may be the lagging indicator. A leading indicator for that may be store traffic. But if we go a level deeper to a leading indicator of parking spots or # of reviews on Google, then store traffic would be the lagging indicator. Subsequently, # of reviews may be a lagging indicator in the context of website visits or Get Directions clicks through the GMB profile.
So KPIs are on the leading-lagging indicator spectrum contextually.
So what if I apply the same logic to life?
For me right now, balance is a pretty deep leading indicator. But let’s start with lagging indicators. $, house, car, accessories, land, investments. That’s one level of materialistic things. But then I think family and friends, on some level, is also a lagging indicator. We gauge our social success on how many friends we have or the depth of those connections. Like which parties we’re invited to or host. Who the guests are at the party. Same with weddings. How much money can we show to others that we have through our wedding. Even our partners. We may require, or at least wish, that our partners are of a certain social class, profession, appearance, etc. For others, it may be knowledge. Reading, consuming and displaying knowledge is a show of success.
Hmm, success itself is framed as an expectation. Success implies that there was some sort of expectation and that expectation was met to whatever level. That you had a dream or vision or goal and you achieved that goal.
I want to view success as a state of being.
Side note: the destination of point A to point B is a fundamental belief in society than I can explore further.
Success is being who I want to be. Success is being my highest self. Even there, though, isn’t there an expectation of what my highest self should be?
I think the expectation is the effort. Which I hypothesized the other day. But I’m not sure how much of what I concluded I actually believe.
But thinking about it, ‘my highest self’ is an expectation. Let’s cut the sentence in half. “Success is being my highest self” → “Success is being.”
Just by being, I am successful.
We’ve given all these proxies to what success is that we’ve lost the fundamental truth. The thing is when we get deeper into our own lives and within society, we start changing our perceptions of lagging indicators to become leading indicators. Then that cycle continues until we’ve lost ourselves. We start measuring those things just for the sake of measuring them and lose track of why we started measuring them in the first place.
Interesting to see the natural convergence of many of these definitions and beliefs to two words. Like “success is.” “Expectancy is.” “It is.” That’s a simple yet profound answer to whatever the question is.
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