Original Post

I am incredibly intrigued by the progression from survival to significance, and the steps in between.

If I look back on my corporate career, it was possible to just keep building traditional success, but I would never achieve significance - what I did just didn’t matter enough.

Life is different now - if I’m honest, I’m still bouncing between survival and stability within my business, but worthwhile success and a shot at significance are at least a possibility (admittedly with a LOT of hard work between here and there).

I suppose it depends what we want our ultimate destination to be….

Further Thoughts

I wonder if the search for significance is something that is always within us, or whether it is something that develops during our journey through life ?

I can remember the optimism of youth, but if I’m honest, looking back to the majority of my corporate career, I can’t remember being particularly concerned about significance, except maybe that I thought that achieving significant success would somehow make everything OK. And I didn’t leave my corporate career because I wanted significance - I just didn’t want to spend my days doing that kind of job any more.

Actually, as I think about it now, my own desire to achieve significance is probably a more recent development - as I have developed myself through reading and learning, and by pushing myself way outside my comfort zone, I have realised that significance, rather than success, is what I want to achieve. The trade from success to survival/stability is a hard one at times, but in my case, necessary because my old path had no destination other than traditional success.

On reflection, I think that you can start out in life on a journey of significance, but you don’t have to - you can make the switch at any time - as long as you understand that the longer you leave it, the harder it might be….