The Success Lie. Janelle Bruland

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      Chapter 1

      The Truth About Success

       “The truth is the choice is yours, and yours alone, to live your best life.”

      Are you living your best life?

      Do you know what your best life could look like and feel that it’s out of reach? Or do you not yet know what that best life looks like? This is a personal question we have to answer for ourselves. The good news is each of us can identify and take steps to achieve a life of joy and significance – one where we are the best version of ourselves and contributing fully to the things that matter most to us.

      You have likely picked up this book as you are a high achiever who is constantly looking for ways to improve. You don’t need to be told to work harder, as this comes naturally to you. You have likely had some success in areas and seasons of your life. Perhaps you have even experienced times of major success. At the same time, you have felt the gap – the space between what is and what could be. The gap can be recognized when, despite the amount of success you have had, you still find yourself wanting. You may simply feel something is missing; you feel empty or completely overwhelmed. Or perhaps drained to the point where you are not sure where to turn. It’s ok. I have been there too and I can help you.

      Over 20 years ago, I started a small services company out of the living room of my home. Today it is a successful regional enterprise that has been recognized as an industry leader. At times over the years as our company has grown, it has been hard to keep a balance between work and home. Working in commercial facility services – an industry that is on the go 24/7 – makes it challenging to stay on top of everything.

      As a seasoned entrepreneur I understand well the feeling of being on top of the world one moment with the new client you have won, or product you have launched, and crashing to earth at a lightning pace the next moment when you find the bank account short for payroll, or receive notice from one of your key people that they’ll be leaving. It is a rollercoaster of highs and lows – sometimes within a 24-hour period!

      And this is just one aspect of your life. Add to it the desire to be present with your family, spend time with friends, and give back to your community. The list goes on, and it can feel like you don’t have enough time in the day to do everything you want to do. Or sometimes, it seems like no matter what you are doing, you feel you should be doing something else.

      I can relate – when I am traveling for work, I am missing my daughter’s basketball game. When I am at her game, I am tempted to check my phone to see what is going on at work. It doesn’t matter that the game is at 7 p.m., because that is when most of our teams are working cleaning commercial buildings.

      Entrepreneurs and business professionals alike often struggle with juggling too many balls and end up feeling frustrated and overwhelmed trying to keep up in this fast-paced world we live in. Consumed by media and the constant barrage of communications from tweets, texts, TV, radio, and the web, we are on information overload. It seems impossible to keep up.

      The worldwide instant access we now have at our fingertips compared to the generations before us is astounding. Did you know that we have access to more information in just one day than our great grandparents had in their entire lifetime? When our grandparents wanted to connect with someone, they had to make the choice to do so – to either call them, write a letter or meet in person. They couldn’t just text someone while simultaneously listening to the news, checking Twitter and surfing the web. They maybe got lost a little more without a GPS but let’s get real – sometimes Siri gives us the wrong directions. Somehow our grandparents got to where they needed to go; and they survived not knowing instantly about the engagement of a prince, the business tycoon’s latest lawsuit, or the earthquake on the other side of the world as it was happening. They found out the information on the nightly news, or in the newspaper the next day. Without all our modern conveniences they seemed to do just fine. Maybe better.

      Now in this age of information, we can get our emails on our watches, video-chat with our colleague in Indonesia, and download apps on focus and prioritization. These improvements in technology can be great and they are certainly plentiful. However, because there are so many of them – so many sites providing news alerts, so many apps to choose from, so many educational articles and blogs – we are perpetually at risk of drowning in distraction.

      I understand the heavy burden of those who are overwhelmed and exhausted from running on the treadmill society says is the way to success. Work harder, longer, sacrificing everything, even your health or family. If we succumb to what everyone else is doing, we will continue to be overwhelmed.

      There is another way to approach this challenge. I have been on this treadmill myself and discovered what I call the “Success Lie.” The process of constantly striving day in and day out – even if it ultimately brings crazy success – often leaves one exhausted, unsatisfied and still wanting more. It can damage your health, your relationships and all the things that really matter most. After years of striving, I found myself in a situation where my family was doing well, and I had achieved my dream of building a successful business and yet somehow, despite all of this, I was left feeling somewhat empty and confused. Even with all that I had accomplished, I was left feeling like it wasn’t enough. I realized that instead of being in the driver’s seat of my life, I had taken a back seat, allowing societal pressures to tell me what mattered.

      Once this became clear, I got myself off the treadmill and made the decision to take back my life. You can do it too. But it’s not easy. It requires first making a choice. You must realize that the life you are living is not working for you, and is certainly not the one that you were destined to have. Realizing this is incredibly freeing and empowering. Once you’ve made this discovery, you can then make the choice to move forward and do things differently. You can learn to be intentional with the things that matter, and eliminate everything else.

       You can learn to be intentional with the things that matter, and eliminate everything else.