High Achievers Value Simplicity

Dear lovely people,

The other day, a Living Lectures client called me up to thank me for all I have done to make her pick-up with life and her business. One of the things I went home with from our conversation was that I make it sound so simple to achieve success. And of course, I agree with her that success is so simple to achieve if you bring yourself to doing the hard things that must be done to achieve it.

Let’s take a closer look at the term “simplicity”. Simplicity is so relative it can have different meanings to different people. The idea of simple living for example, often evokes images of low-income or underprivileged lifestyles which may be unappealing or impractical in a supposed ‘mordent times’ as the world today.

Simplicity might be looked upon as the state, quality, or an instance of being simple. It could equally be considered the freedom from complexity, intricacy, or division into parts. However, simplicity is not self-sacrifice, nor is it the absence of complexity from our daily lives. Complexity is an integral part of a simple life. Creativity is the force we can learn to employ to make the complicated simple. Albert Einstein says that “If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.”

Creating a life which integrates simplicity and success is a goal which requires strategy and effort to attain. For sure, achieving simplicity is not simple; it requires vision and action. As you set out on the quest for success, you have to be equipped with the capacity to craft effective visions which is an essential first step in assessing your current reality and mapping a course to your life goals. You have to be convinced that what you want is important. Once a vision is crafted, you must carefully assess current reality and make sure that action steps align with and support what really matters to you.  As a matter of fact, you have to integrate you vision, reality and the action needed to propel such a vision through a realist world to achieve success.

The urge for simplicity comes from the frustration of living lives which seem more complex than we can handle, as if we are living at the mercy of external forces. We learn to live within a fog of complexity. Once we have developed a framework for integrating vision, reality and action, it becomes easier to order decisions and choices around what matters to us. The path to our goal is simplified and success is within reach.

“I do believe in simplicity. It is astonishing as well as sad, how many trivial affairs even the wisest thinks he must attend to in a day; how singular an affair he thinks he must omit. When the mathematician would solve a difficult problem, he first frees the equation of all encumbrances, and reduces it to its simplest terms. So simplify the problem of life, distinguish the necessary and the real. Probe the earth to see where your main roots run.” So says Henry David Thoreau