Why I Stopped Chasing Success and Started Choosing Joy
After reaching a milestone most entrepreneurs dream of, Shani Godwin discovered that success alone couldn’t deliver fulfillment. Her journey reveals why joy, not achievement, is the true measure of a life well lived.
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It was 3 o’clock in the morning. I had just come home from a grueling and intense week of 14-hour days at Babson College. The irony of it all was the very reason I was there: we had just reached the seven-figure revenue mark, yet I was deep in the throes of developing another new growth plan, even though I was struggling to manage the growth we’d just achieved. Instead of feeling happy about reaching that million-dollar milestone, here I was wide awake, sobbing uncontrollably, alone in the middle of the night — my depression raging.
“You should be so happy. Isn’t this what you’ve been working so hard for?” my girlfriends would chide me as I complained about how stressed I was. I’d made it to the end of the rainbow, only to realize there was no pot of gold. Instead, there were only more mountains to climb.
The truth was, I wasn’t happy. I was alone inside a world I didn’t come from and didn’t know how to navigate. Worst of all? No one understood why achieving this milestone, one that only 2% of businesses would ever reach, made me feel so sad. It was at that point that I could finally admit the truth that had been gnawing at me deep inside. I was miserable. What’s more...I wasn’t quite sure where the business I started, which used to allow me to feed my soul, had somehow detoured me to this 3 am desolate hole.
What had gone wrong?
The Lie of the Finish Line
It was in that moment, awake in the middle of the night, that I realized I was chasing other people’s definition of success: the endless pursuit of more and more growth. I was struggling with a simple question: “Was it okay to not want to grow?”
In that moment, I sat with the truth that I had been much happier when my business was making $250,000 in annual revenue than I was on the other side of that million-dollar mark. I looked back and remembered that time. Back then, I was full of ideas, inspiration, and creativity. I was doing work I loved with clients I loved. I was working four-day work weeks and taking Fridays off so I could wake up and meet the day with no agenda, and just let life find me.
Scaling was never my idea. It was the idea of well-meaning advisors who believed I had what it took to grow a “successful” company. But why do we define success simply by how big or small something is? That’s when it hit me. Somewhere along the way, I started building someone else’s dream for me instead of honoring my own.
For years, I believed joy lived sometime in the future: after the next big new client win, the next award, achievement, or revenue milestone. Like many people, I was chasing the dream, convinced fulfillment would arrive when I reached the next destination.
This is the lie of the finish line.
Our culture is so focused around the constant pursuit of success. We celebrate the relentless chase of achievement, but rarely do we stop to consider whether we’re sacrificing our joy in the process.
In fact, when I ask people what joy is, most can’t answer it. That’s because it’s not a destination to be found. It’s an experience to be lived.
I’ve realized that, somewhere along the way, we’ve shifted from being kids who lived purely from within ourselves to separating ourselves from our true joy center. We moved from doing what makes us happy to defining our worthiness solely by numbers hit and KPIs achieved.
But what if the adults have it all wrong? What if joy, not money, is the real currency that will fill the parts of us that achievement never can?
Joy Is Not the Reward. It’s the Way Back.
On that fateful night ten years ago, I decided I would only define my success by what makes me happy. This has since evolved into a philosophy I call JOY Economics: Creating Better Ways to Live, Work, and Play®. I refused to believe that I was the only one who’d gotten duped chasing their success and not their joy.
Here are a few things I wish I had understood sooner in my journey to joy:
Happiness is tied to circumstances and consumerism, but JOY is an internal state that no amount of money can buy.
Many high achievers discover that achieving their goals doesn’t automatically create fulfillment. Oftentimes, it only takes them further away from it. The more we achieve, the more energy we spend protecting our assets versus doing the things we enjoyed that helped us achieve those goals in the first place. And if we’re not careful, we create a vicious cycle that keeps us disconnected from living because we are so busy doing.
The pursuit of success can unintentionally disconnect us from ourselves, and we may find ourselves running someone else’s race instead of our own.
Joy isn’t something we find at the end of the journey. It can become the way we experience the journey itself. Every person has a “joy center,” but many have lost touch with it amid the demands and expectations of life.
For me, reconnecting with that joy center meant I had to pay attention to the moments that make me feel most like myself. Today, I find those in deep belly laughs with the people I love, spending time in nature, floating in the warm waters of the Caribbean, looking up at the sky and remembering how small I really am in the grand scheme of things, with the trust that the waves of life will effortlessly hold me. These experiences remind me of who I am underneath all the expectations and accomplishments, and they always bring me back to myself and reconnect me to joy in ways achieving success never can.
So, before you set another goal or chase yet another milestone, it may be worth asking yourself a few questions:
When do I feel most alive?
What activities make me lose track of time?
What brought me joy before the world told me who I should be?
If success were guaranteed, how would I choose to spend my day?
Intentionally choosing joy has shown me so much more about myself than the pursuit of success ever could. Achievement may teach us how to build a life, but joy teaches us how to actually live one.
What if the life you keep chasing isn’t where joy lives? What if JOY is here for you today, and it’s simply waiting for you to stop running long enough to notice it?
About Shani Godwin
An entrepreneur, speaker, author, and Chief Joy Officer, Shani Godwin has spent more than two decades building businesses that challenge how we think about productivity and well-being. She is the founder of Communiqué USA, a high-growth marketing firm that has served clients like Chick-fil-A, Cox Enterprises, and Party City. She is also the creator of Joy Economics®, the coaching and speaker platform that helps women entrepreneurs scale to seven figures while prioritizing their well-being.
Find Out More
https://shanigodwin.com/
“You should be so happy. Isn’t this what you’ve been working so hard for?” my girlfriends would chide me as I complained about how stressed I was. I’d made it to the end of the rainbow, only to realize there was no pot of gold. Instead, there were only more mountains to climb.
The truth was, I wasn’t happy. I was alone inside a world I didn’t come from and didn’t know how to navigate. Worst of all? No one understood why achieving this milestone, one that only 2% of businesses would ever reach, made me feel so sad. It was at that point that I could finally admit the truth that had been gnawing at me deep inside. I was miserable. What’s more...I wasn’t quite sure where the business I started, which used to allow me to feed my soul, had somehow detoured me to this 3 am desolate hole.
What had gone wrong?
The Lie of the Finish Line
It was in that moment, awake in the middle of the night, that I realized I was chasing other people’s definition of success: the endless pursuit of more and more growth. I was struggling with a simple question: “Was it okay to not want to grow?”
In that moment, I sat with the truth that I had been much happier when my business was making $250,000 in annual revenue than I was on the other side of that million-dollar mark. I looked back and remembered that time. Back then, I was full of ideas, inspiration, and creativity. I was doing work I loved with clients I loved. I was working four-day work weeks and taking Fridays off so I could wake up and meet the day with no agenda, and just let life find me.
Scaling was never my idea. It was the idea of well-meaning advisors who believed I had what it took to grow a “successful” company. But why do we define success simply by how big or small something is? That’s when it hit me. Somewhere along the way, I started building someone else’s dream for me instead of honoring my own.
For years, I believed joy lived sometime in the future: after the next big new client win, the next award, achievement, or revenue milestone. Like many people, I was chasing the dream, convinced fulfillment would arrive when I reached the next destination.
This is the lie of the finish line.
Our culture is so focused around the constant pursuit of success. We celebrate the relentless chase of achievement, but rarely do we stop to consider whether we’re sacrificing our joy in the process.
In fact, when I ask people what joy is, most can’t answer it. That’s because it’s not a destination to be found. It’s an experience to be lived.
I’ve realized that, somewhere along the way, we’ve shifted from being kids who lived purely from within ourselves to separating ourselves from our true joy center. We moved from doing what makes us happy to defining our worthiness solely by numbers hit and KPIs achieved.
But what if the adults have it all wrong? What if joy, not money, is the real currency that will fill the parts of us that achievement never can?
Joy Is Not the Reward. It’s the Way Back.
On that fateful night ten years ago, I decided I would only define my success by what makes me happy. This has since evolved into a philosophy I call JOY Economics: Creating Better Ways to Live, Work, and Play®. I refused to believe that I was the only one who’d gotten duped chasing their success and not their joy.
Here are a few things I wish I had understood sooner in my journey to joy:
Happiness is tied to circumstances and consumerism, but JOY is an internal state that no amount of money can buy.
Many high achievers discover that achieving their goals doesn’t automatically create fulfillment. Oftentimes, it only takes them further away from it. The more we achieve, the more energy we spend protecting our assets versus doing the things we enjoyed that helped us achieve those goals in the first place. And if we’re not careful, we create a vicious cycle that keeps us disconnected from living because we are so busy doing.
The pursuit of success can unintentionally disconnect us from ourselves, and we may find ourselves running someone else’s race instead of our own.
Joy isn’t something we find at the end of the journey. It can become the way we experience the journey itself. Every person has a “joy center,” but many have lost touch with it amid the demands and expectations of life.
For me, reconnecting with that joy center meant I had to pay attention to the moments that make me feel most like myself. Today, I find those in deep belly laughs with the people I love, spending time in nature, floating in the warm waters of the Caribbean, looking up at the sky and remembering how small I really am in the grand scheme of things, with the trust that the waves of life will effortlessly hold me. These experiences remind me of who I am underneath all the expectations and accomplishments, and they always bring me back to myself and reconnect me to joy in ways achieving success never can.
So, before you set another goal or chase yet another milestone, it may be worth asking yourself a few questions:
When do I feel most alive?
What activities make me lose track of time?
What brought me joy before the world told me who I should be?
If success were guaranteed, how would I choose to spend my day?
Intentionally choosing joy has shown me so much more about myself than the pursuit of success ever could. Achievement may teach us how to build a life, but joy teaches us how to actually live one.
What if the life you keep chasing isn’t where joy lives? What if JOY is here for you today, and it’s simply waiting for you to stop running long enough to notice it?
About Shani Godwin
Find Out More
https://shanigodwin.com/
