Extrinsic success is the acclaim, awards and accolades society bestows on us. Or discretely purchase, for the less scrupulous. It is the laudatory honours that commemorate our societal or communal contributions or supposed contributions. It is the approbatory prose declared about us at official events.
Extrinsic success is corporeal. It can be seen, heard, felt, and smelt. If we need to remind ourselves just how successful we are we need only turn to the medals, the plaques, the certificates, the cars, the bank account, and the carefully curated conspicuous consumption. Those are markers of our glory, abilities, or contribution to a community, society, or nation.
Extrinsic success is society’s approval of us or our deeds, often both.
Intrinsic success is the sense of accomplishment or delight we feel when we achieve our own goals, the ones we set for ourselves and remain unspoken. No one dictates or defines it for us. There are no obvious markers of success, often only subtle ones. Even then it is difficult to discern. Because intrinsic success is privately and quietly celebrated. A quiet smile, a delight in the heart, a spring in our step, an ice cream purchase. It’s mundane and easy to miss.
At this point in my life, I have a fairly good idea of how to achieve extrinsic success. I have read enough books, talked to enough people, chased it down myself (unsuccessfully, of course), experienced enough situations and lived a sufficiently reflective life to appreciate what it takes, what I need to be, what I have to do, what needs to be done and most importantly, what I have to give up in order to achieve extrinsic success.
To begin, there are some basic beliefs that we must take seriously. First, time is money. Second, success can only be expressed in material wealth and conspicuous consumption. Third, the approbation of strangers is more valuable than the love and support of our family and friends. Fourth, fulfilling the desires of others has more value than fulfilling our needs.
If you have difficulty accepting these beliefs wholeheartedly, you are not going to be as successful as you hoped. In fact, there is a high chance you will end up a loser.
If you don’t think time is money, every moment you breathe is a ringgit not made. If you don’t think the time bestowed on us was to earn money, awards, or something, then you are a loser. Because winners make money. Success is made from money. If you don’t have lots of money or the equivalent, you are not successful.
To achieve serious extrinsic success the first group of people we have to spend as little time with is our immediate family. They are followed by our close friends and family.
When our parents ask us to help them, we have to tell them no, I’m sorry, I have work to do. When our spouse wants to spend time with us, we should decline them politely. We are busy. Money doesn’t grow on trees. This lifestyle doesn’t pay for itself, baby! When our children ask to play with us, we must refuse them. They won’t remember anything, anyway. Our friends and other close relatives? Same thing.
It is a waste of time because all these people do not earn us money. In fact, we have to spend money on them! That will eat into the return on investment for each moment. So unless there is some worthwhile return from them, it is best to devote our efforts to making money.
And the best way to do that is to hang around people with money who appreciate us by giving us money. That, unless we live amongst such people, would usually mean having to be in the company of strangers. The more time we spend with them the likelier they are to spend on us for professional or personal reasons. If we can fulfil their desires, the likelier they are to do that.
As for our personal time and space – a waste of time again because it does not earn us money. If it does earn us money or has the potential to do so, then that is fine. Because time is money and any moment not earning is a waste of time.
So achieving extrinsic success is actually straightforward: Don’t waste our time on ourselves and our family and friends. Don’t waste time on things that earn no money. Devote ourselves to earning money at every moment, past, present or future. Every moment should be spent on earning or the potential to earn. Be like those millionaires or billionaires that can tell us much they earn by the minute. The day your time can be expressed in currency instead of time, you made it. Congratulations.
The trouble with extrinsic success is that it depends on the whims and fancies of others and is entirely transactional. It breeds constant anxiety among us as to whether we are doing well enough and that success may be lost. And once we start to compare ourselves with others, we can always find some shortcomings to complain about. The accumulation game does not stop because accumulation is a signal of success.
When we step back and consider it as a whole, I cannot help but find the entire enterprise of extrinsic success a mad one. I think it is because of my starting point which rejects the axiom that time is money.
Time is and is worth greater than money. Time is living and living is not just about making money. Living is existing, interacting, maturing, contributing, savouring, etc. Time, therefore, contains the arena of life. When we reduce that arena of life to the repetitive act of making money, we disrespect it and cheapen this precious moment given to us.
If we think about it, we emerged from nothingness into something. We could have emerged at any of the billion years in the past but somehow we manifested here on earth and now. If we think about the odds of us being here, they were random too. Each existence starts with a sperm race of hundreds of millions. All of us here now exist together for this one moment out of the infiniteness and randomness of time and space. None of us could have planned to be here together if we tried because it is not up to us.
Each moment of existence is special because it will never happen again. When my family or friends die, that special moment or potential for it is over. It can never be recovered. The moment we die, we are cast adrift again on that infiniteness of time and space. No amount of money can bring back that moment. All the money ever made in existence couldn’t get those moments back. As sad and pathetic as it sounds, that’s all we ever have – the moments when we felt alive, loved, joyful and satisfied with ourselves or our lives. The rest are all left behind. We know this but it’s so easy to forget.
Intrinsic success celebrates those irrecoverable moments. Intrinsic success acknowledges that people and our time with them, time by ourselves, is worth more than the money we can make from it.
While extrinsic success is good for the ego and is useful in small doses, it is the intrinsic success that makes life worth living. Well, for me, anyway.
