The Success Trap

Sharing my learnings from the book, The Success Trap by Amina Aitsi-Selmi

The Success Trap by Amina Aitsi-Selmi

Written by specialist coach and consultant Dr Amina Aitsi-Selmi, this book builds on her years of experience as a physician, in healthcare policy, and coaching and consulting with hundreds of individuals and organizations. Combining her personal expertise with scientific research – including Google’s Project Aristotle and the Global Happiness Council’s Workplace Wellbeing report – it provides insights and useful takeaways you can use in your own work life. Don’t stay stuck in a job you hate – let this book help you escape The Success Trap.

• Good job, good salary, recognition from your peers sounds great but none of these things – nothing that we conventionally call “success” – is necessarily going to make you happy. In fact, achieving this sort of success can even do you harm. You might start to forget what you want out of life, what your true priorities are, or – to be blunt – what “success” means to you.
• The author, Dr. Amina Aitsi-Selmi broke out of the “success” in its conventional form. She shifted her career away from health policy and toward coaching work.
• Today’s chaotic world is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. It even has an acronym: VUCA. And it also applies to our careers. It’s no wonder that when people feel they’re on to a good thing, they tend to stay put. The thing is, staying put can also lead to problems.
  • success myth – the idea that achieving promotion after promotion is all a career should be.
  • work myths, like the idea you must keep busy all the time or maximize your productivity.
  • financial incentives can trap you too, either through the high salary itself, or the golden handcuffs promise of a future pay rise.
• All of these problems add up to the high achiever paradox: people who seem to have won the race to a successful career, who then lose their happiness in the process.
  • For many successful people, achievement is a compulsion. They achieve one goal, and then immediately move on to the next – there’s no stepping back and feeling proud. And there often isn’t time for concerns like health and relationships, either. What’s worse, is that when successful people start to feel unfulfilled, they often feel guilty about it.
  • Another issue that successful people often face is imposter syndrome, which is the very common feeling that you aren’t competent at your own job.
  • successful people may also find they become what the author calls, rescuers: those people who help others to such an extent that they feel they don’t deserve help themselves.
• Having a clear vision is a key step to achieving success. The problem is, successful people sometimes focus on goals to a frankly concerning degree. And when you’re used to constantly having a target to meet or a commitment to keep, the whole process can turn into goal addiction.
• Escaping the success trap requires a mindset shift.
  • The opposite state of mind to goal addiction is creative flow, otherwise called being “in the zone.” In flow, you become absorbed in an activity for its own sake. You’re able to find creative solutions to the problems you face, and, crucially, to enjoy the process.
  • Creativity can simply mean approaching tasks with spontaneity and playfulness, and being willing to take risks.
  • One way to help yourself make that creative shift is to slow down to speed up. The next time you have so much on you don’t know where to start, don’t rush headlong into your to-do list. Step back, breathe deep. Time management is never really time management – it’s choice management.
  • The other thing you need to do to achieve a flow state involves some mental self-scrutiny. People who feel trapped tend to have conflicting thoughts. This sort of mental friction gets in the way of your state of flow. To break free, you must acknowledge that these conflicting thoughts exist. Only then will you be able to make real choices about what you actually want to do, and which direction you want to move in.
  • breaking out of the success trap is about self-awareness.
• Breaking free from your limiting beliefs allows you to reconnect with yourself.
• great technique to help move your thoughts forward:
  • question your limiting assumptions helps you reconnect yourself:
    • What thoughts are you experiencing?
    • how your thoughts restrict you?
    • whether you choose to believe that negative thought.
    • come up with an opposite thought, and engage with it.
    • consider what you plan to do now.
  • respond: now you’re more in tune with your motivations, push a little further, and make a list of which activities drain you and which fill you with energy. Consider how you really want to be spending your time.
  • receive. Being truly receptive means acknowledging your accomplishments and how you feel about your work and life. This sounds simple, but high achievers often struggle with this because it involves shifting out of doing mode and into a more passive state.
• Turn uncertainty into opportunity and make the most of the challenges you face: that is having the entrepreneurial mindset.
• The entrepreneurial mindset is about attitude, not business plans, and it’s the best way you can flourish in the uncertain yet opportunity-filled world you’ll find yourself in outside of the success trap.
  • classic entrepreneur – a business founder bringing something new to the market, full of the energy to come up with completely fresh ideas and see them through.
  • organizational entrepreneurs, or intrapreneurs. These are people who might be employees – but bring creative, dynamic mindsets to the work they do. As an intrapreneur, you can still harness your unique skills and interests and you can take on leadership roles too. You’re just doing it for an organization that already exists.
  • personal entrepreneurs – people who are passionate about taking the initiative and working on causes they love. Personal entrepreneurs are driven individuals who often enjoy making a difference through their work, and they’re great at handling career shifts.
• whatever type of entrepreneurs you choose for yourself, don’t be sucked back into a success trap. Having an entrepreneurial mindset is about looking at the world around you and finding new outlets and opportunities for your particular talents and passions.