Success Is in the Details

In seeking to maximize our potential, we strive towards productivity, mastering skills, increasing our bandwidth, and expanding our reach. But what’s sometimes lost in this pursuit is a needed step back for analysis. Ultimately, it is the most minute aspects of our lives that can hold us back the most—from the thoughts we think to the comfortability of our workspace.

Cultivating Success Internally

You may reach towards success but forget its foundations—a calm, clear, and tranquil mind, free of confusion and doubt, luminous and content. With your mind as your friend, you can do anything. With your mind as a bully, every step of the way will be filled with difficulty and aggravation. This is why self-care techniques that focus on your relationship to your mind, like meditation, conscious breathing, creative thinking, contemplation exercises, positive affirmations, and more, are so amazingly beneficial. By starting with the least perceptible details of our existence (eg. thoughts and emotions), they allow us to address the root of our behaviors. We’ve explored many of these practices in greater detail throughout our blog.

Cultivating Success Externally

You can use the same framework externally, starting with the simplest and most subtle aspects of your environment. If you look close enough, you’ll find a load of small and often overlooked details that you can work on to maximize your potential.

For example, the ergonomics at your desk can be the difference between a good day and a bad day, and one filled with joy and motivation to one filled with anger and pain. Similarly, replacing the morning news with an inspirational podcast can have a profound effect on your anxiety levels.

Ask yourself: What do I spend the most time doing every day? Do I feel calm, motivated, and content? How could I alter my environment or activities to make my experience more streamlined, pain-free, and efficient? What is the source of the discomfort I’m facing? If you feel that there’s room for improvement, first try to pinpoint where the solution might lie. For example, if you’re feeling agitated at work and have neck pain at the end of the day, decide if the answer might be a way to raise your computer screen, the ability to stand up and work at the same time, a cushion for your feet, a pause for relaxation exercises for a few minutes during the day, or a combination of multiple of these. The answer will lead you to the correct solution. Oftentimes, there’s many ways to solve one problem, but only a few that are right for your situation.

When you’ve addressed the internal and external details, your capacity for success expands naturally.