Recent happiness statistics are, ironically, depressing. Photo / Bruno Aguirre, Unsplash
The reason so many of us are unhappy is because we’re stuck in an achievement trap – but there is another way, says “recovering success addict” Emma Gannon.
Emma Gannon has become an “accidental expert” on how to be successful. The bestselling author has spent the past six years gently interrogating 400 podcast guests – Oscar winners, philosophers and Olympians – about the secrets of success. Her award-winning show, Ctrl Alt Delete, has had more than 12 million downloads. “I wanted to peek behind the curtain and figure out what made someone successful at what they do,” she says.
Gannon is no stranger to success herself. She’s written four nonfiction books and a celebrated novel and, in 2018, was named on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list. But after hanging out with the world’s highest achievers, Gannon was astounded by “just how many ‘successful’ people whispered to me, ‘None of this impressive stuff has made my inner problems go away’”.
Gannon experienced the disconnect for herself. After giving a prestigious keynote speech, she went back to her hotel room and sobbed. It was a career highlight, but she felt empty, disconnected and lonely. “My Instagram feed looked full, busy and exciting. Friends were messaging me, saying, ‘you’re killing it’. What was the ‘it’ I was killing? My soul probably,” she says.
Now a self-confessed recovering “success addict”, Gannon has quit her podcast and written a new book, entitled The Success Myth – about why the traditional version of success is making us feel lonely, unfulfilled and dispirited.
The book is timely. The recent happiness statistics are, ironically, depressing: one in seven now take an antidepressant; and a 2018 mental-health study found 74 per cent of UK adults have felt “so stressed at some point over the past year, they felt overwhelmed or unable to cope” (and that was before Covid struck.)
“The Great Resignation” (a phrase coined in 2021) describes how workers all over the world have been quitting their jobs at historic rates. Why? “We have been chasing the scam of the outward traditional success (thinking there’s always ‘more’), but it doesn’t actually end up impacting our inner landscape in a positive or lasting way,” says Gannon.
This interview feels personal, not just professional, because I’ve recently made a post-Covid leap myself, leaving behind a big job in London to live on the wild coast of Northumberland. At 55, I’m too young to retire (not to mention my pitiful pension), so I need to work, but I don’t want the stress of a big job. I feel personally invested in the question Gannon is exploring – how do we redefine what success means and create a life that we love?
Where to start? “Ask, what do you want? The question is simple but hard,” says Gannon.
“Without truly trying to figure out what we want – rather than what our friends, partner, family want – we will just blindly go along with what everyone else is telling us to do, living someone else’s dream.
“Society expects us to be constantly achieving, and I think a lot of people are exhausted, quite frankly,” says Gannon. “And they just want less. I’ve coached people who are incredibly successful, and when you really strip it back to what they want, they want a four-day week, they want to have days off to go to the cinema, they want to go for a walk with their dog, they want to catch up with a friend, they want to go outside in the sun.”
She interviewed the singer Will Young, who defined success as pottering around his house in his tracksuit with his dogs at his feet, versus arena tours and swanky parties.
Focus on the small stuff, says Gannon. “How do we enjoy spending our minutes, hours, days? What seemingly insignificant, mundane things will make us feel slightly happier? How can we do more of those?”
But what about money? Shouldn’t I be working flat out to top up my pension? I have a decade or so left before I retire. “Why wait till you retire to live the life you want?” says Gannon bluntly. “Do it now.”
She has a point. Both my parents died of cancer before they were 50. They didn’t get to retire. Gannon is not saying money doesn’t matter. “Being financially stable will absolutely improve your comfort and security, but chasing endless amounts of money, feeling like we need to buy everything in sight, working in a high-salaried job at the expense of our mental health, isn’t the big fix we think it is.”
Ask yourself, she says, how much money is enough for you? “It can be empowering to simply be aware of what you need in your life and what you want, versus what you think you want, and splitting the difference.”
Finally, ponder – outside of money, what are the things that make you feel successful? Write down a list of things that are going well that don’t have a monetary value. What are the things that light you up that cost nothing? For me, feeling rich means the luxury of time – to walk the dog, to see friends for a weekday lunch, to start the day at 9am versus 5am.
Seeing my parents die young, I’ve always been driven to pack in as much as I could. Gannon advises me to use that drive to create micro-ambitions. “Forget long-term goals or any grand plans. Write down any small things you’d like to achieve over the next day, week or month,” she says.
My goal is that I want to finish the book I’ve been trying to write. Gannon suggests I create process goals versus milestone goals. Instead of saying, “I’m going to write a book”, try “I’m going to write for 20 minutes a day”. “The process goal is not just about the goal itself, but about experiencing it, being present for it, noticing the time spent on it and learning to congratulate yourself along the way.”
Although there is no one formula for “real” success, there were themes in Gannon’s interviews that frequently cropped up as to what truly made people happy. These included:
“When we unpick the myth of success, we open ourselves up to a new sense of freedom and get to design our lives from scratch,” says Gannon. I can’t wait.
1. What does a proper mental well-being break look like to you?
How can you incorporate mini brain-breaks into your day? Could you read a page of your book, sit quietly or have a nap? What do smaller moments of rest look like to you?
2. Who – or what – are you actually working for?
Often, we were praised as children for how much we worked. As an adult, notice what feeling you are chasing when being productive. Do you want validation, to feel enough satisfaction, to prove something to someone? Are there better ways to feel that way?
3. What is your body trying to tell you?
Whenever you start to feel panicked, caught in a loop or completely terrified once you’ve agreed to do something in a record number of days, check in with yourself and your body to see if you can adjust anything. If you can cancel, do so.
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