~Satisfaction Through Significance

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Satisfaction Through Significance

Why is it that as they get older, highly accomplished people often feels a need to measure their lives more in terms of the impact they have rather than by what they have?

Management guru Peter Drucker called this the shift from success to significance. Success is achieving your goals; significance is having a lasting positive impact on the lives of others.

For some, the emerging desire to be significant is just another form of vanity -- a yearning to achieve a kind of immortality through good deeds long remembered. For others, it’s simply a desire to live a worthy life.

Whatever the reason, when people begin to think more deeply about significance, they tend to place greater emphasis on enjoying what they already have and enriching their lives through service to others.

The irony is that living a life focused on the pursuit of significance is more personally gratifying than one devoted to climbing the ladder of success. As author Stephen Covey warns, it’s no good climbing to the top of a ladder that’s leaning against the wrong wall. Not many people say on their deathbed, "I wish I’d spent more time at the office."

The thing is, when we worry less about whether we have what we need to be happy, we become more likely to achieve happiness. When we use our heads, hearts, and wallets to make a positive difference in the lives of others, we’re rewarded with a sense of pride and satisfaction that’s hard to get any other way.

Success can produce pleasure, but only significance can generate fulfillment.