Are Success and Fulfillment the Same Thing?

Welcome back to the Student of Life podcast with your host Joe Hafner. In last week’s episode, Joe looked at fulfillment and what that means. Today's question: are success and fulfillment the same thing? It’s great to have both but you can have one without the other, which Joe has experienced. As discussed in the last episode, fulfillment is when your purpose is in full alignment with your core values. But what is success? To show the difference between success with fulfillment and success without fulfillment, Joe explains some of his story. Early financial success By time Joe reached his early 30s, he had achieved a fair amount of success. He had learned real estate from one of the top real estate agents in America, was responsible for getting him featured in Time Magazine, had been his primary editor on two books published by Harper Collins, co-authored with him a pair of real estate books, and had bought and flipped close to 200 single family residences. Back in the early 2000s, Joe was buying property on an almost weekly basis and had a $2 million line of credit to buy property at foreclosure sales. He also coached and consulted with top real estate teams across North America. In 2008, Joe was about to become the Managing broker of a new real estate firm, had a couple of novels yet to be published and by all accounts, had more success than the average person in their mid 30s. However, what he didn’t have was fulfillment. Joe didn’t know what his purpose was, what he wanted, or what he was chasing. By his own admission, he thought too highly of himself and had grown cocky, which kept him from digging into what fulfillment would look like for him. He believed he didn’t need to learn anything new. The biggest problem, though, is that Joe neither liked nor saw value in people. Facing reality Everything in Joe’s life changed on October 1, 2008. That was the date the new company he was hired to lead opened its doors. It was also the date of the TARP bail out when the whole economy tanked. In the following months, everything came crashing down. It was the beginning of the recession. Until then, Joe had been on top of the world and thought he could do anything. For the first several months, while the market crashed and burned around him, he was in denial. Eventually, though, he had to face reality: he was facing bankruptcy and complete financial ruin. He remembers sitting down with his wife and discussing the possibility of losing everything. Joe says this was a very humbling experience, and a turning point in his life. When you go through trials, you have two choices: you can give up and quit, or you can fight to try to make it through. Although Joe never wants to go through something like that again, he wouldn’t change anything about how it happened. What he did, what he learned, how he fought, and how God built him back up is the worst but also the best thing that every happened to him. Pain or Potential There are two reasons people change: pain or potential. For most people, it takes pain for them to change. The pain of this experience caused Joe to grow his character and get rid of the stuff that had defined him before. God stripped him bare, and Joe began to realize his purpose was to help people and coach them through their struggles. You have an opportunity where that pain can help you turn into something better, find your purpose and get rid of all the stuff that blocks your vision. Don’t waste the opportunity and go through that pain for nothing. Digging deep for reinvention Joe was forced to completely reinvent himself. By the time the recession was over, he was middle Tennessee’s distressed property expert and bulk of his business was referral-based. He saw an opportunity and figured out how to make the most of the market at the time. It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you have no choice but to dig deep down inside yourself and figure out if you have what it takes to make things happen. Joe worked 10-12 hours a day, 7 days a week because he had no choice. When the chips are down, you do what you have to do. Even though Joe was making a lot of money at this time, he wasn’t keeping it, and couldn’t see the end in sight. Because of this struggle, though, when people came in who were facing foreclosure and needed a short sale, he was able to sympathize with them. Often Joe’s clients had lost a job or been through a divorce, health problem, or death in the family and couldn’t afford to make their payments. He began to have compassion for people because he truly understood what they were going through. He did everything he could think of to get short sales done because he knew how important it was to people. That attitude got a lot of houses sold that otherwise would have been foreclosed, and even though Joe sometimes lost money, he gained fulfillment from helping people who otherwise wouldn’t have been helped. Becoming a student of life Joe says now that those experiences made him a better man. Going through those kinds of situations with people and seeing the impact he could have on the lives of others changed and humbled him. As he was working around the clock with no relief in sight, there was one scripture that he kept coming back to multiple times a day, every day for nearly 8 months: “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” James 1:2-4. Joe kept asking God to show him what he was supposed to learn so he could pass it on to someone else. The recession shaped him, refined him and caused him to start looking to grow. The things that are important started to change, as Joe realized the things that fulfill you and bring contentment and satisfaction in life are the things you can have regardless of money or resources. Materialism was stripped away as "stuff" stopped being important. Learning timeless truths During the recession, Joe started to learn the timeless truths he discussed in episode 1 of this podcast. He developed his core values because he had to figure out what he believed and valued so he knew where to focus and what to do.  He also had a newfound passion to help people, and could see people needed his assistance. It took a great amount of compassion and hours, research and training, discipline and learning how to grind, but by the time the real estate market started turning around again, Joe had learned how to operate in business in order to make things happen. He learned strategies for how to protect his energy and confidence, because with all that was going on he couldn’t afford to be drained. Developing morning rituals where he planned his day and made decisions early in the day became a crucial practice. He also made gym a non-negotiable because he knew the importance of building his body in order to be able to physically do the things that needed to be done. The most important timeless thing Joe learned during that recession is that life is all about people. People can be demanding, disruptive and disagreeable, but Joe’s learned to love and serve them because that’s what God created him to do. That’s what God created us all to do: to love and to serve. Fulfillment and success Back to the topic of fulfillment and success, Joe suggests that if you implement these unchanging things into your life and your business, your chances for success greatly increase. And if you apply them towards getting clarity in your core values, discovering your purpose, and making sure those are fully in alignment, you will move towards fulfillment. In the next episode, Joe explores core values more deeply, and how knowing exactly what you believe gives you a significant edge over the vast majority of people in business, in relationships, and in life.