What Does the Soul Call Success?

It is 5:08 in the morning, and I am waking from a dream about success.

In the dream, an old buddy was challenging me about the 10KGuarantee business I have been building. He did not really understand the concept—or at least that was how it felt to me—but he was confidently explaining why I should be doing something different.

There was history behind the conversation.

We have known each other for more than forty years, and there has always been a friendly competition between us. Who was doing better? Who had the better idea? Who made more money? Who figured life out first?

By the conventional scorecard, he has done extremely well. He built a successful business and sold it for millions of dollars. He reached a place our culture recognizes as success.

So in the dream, his argument carried an invisible trump card:

Look at the scoreboard.

His bank account seemed to give his opinions more authority.

And beneath the business discussion was a deeper insinuation:

His life had worked better than mine.

He had accomplished more. Therefore, perhaps he had become more.

I woke up uncomfortable.

At first, I questioned my business. Maybe I am wrong about 10KGuarantee. Maybe I have invested too much time in something that will not work.

That is a legitimate business question, and I should not use spirituality to avoid it. Ideas need evidence. Businesses need customers. Confidence does not turn a weak model into a strong one.

But underneath that practical question was another:

What does it actually mean to succeed at being alive?

The Ego’s Scoreboard

The ego has plenty of answers.

Money. Recognition. Status. Security. Accomplishment. Possessions. Influence. Winning.

There is an old joke:

He who dies with the most toys wins.

It is funny because it captures the absurdity of the scoreboard.

Wins what?

Death?

I do not mean that worldly success is bad. I would still rather build a successful business than an unsuccessful one. I would rather have enough money than not enough. Achievement can create freedom, comfort, opportunity, and the ability to help other people.

The ego is not wrong for wanting those things. As I explain in Ego & Soul: What I Mean by Them, the ego is an essential navigator of human life.

But perhaps it becomes confused when it turns useful measures of performance into measures of human worth.

Research makes a related distinction. Self-determination theory separates more intrinsic aspirations—such as personal growth, close relationships, community contribution, and health—from extrinsic aspirations such as wealth, fame, and image. The evidence does not say money or achievement are inherently harmful. It suggests that well-being suffers when extrinsic goals dominate the deeper needs those goals were supposed to serve.

The problem may not be having a scoreboard.

It may be forgetting what the scoreboard can—and cannot—measure.

Beneath Comparison

Lying in the darkness at 5:08, I tried something different.

Instead of thinking harder, I became still.

I noticed my breathing. I allowed the argument in my head to quiet and tried to move beneath the frequency of comparison and competition.

This is the kind of shift I describe in Catching the Whisper: the practical mind does not disappear, but it becomes quiet enough for another perspective to emerge.

Then I asked:

What would the soul call success?

An unusual thought experiment began forming.

Before There Was a Scoreboard

Imagine that you are somewhere in infinite darkness.

Except you are not really somewhere, because space has not yet appeared.

You do not have a body, eyes, or hands. You are simply awareness.

There is nothing else to observe and nothing against which to compare yourself. There is no clock because nothing changes. No yesterday because there are no events to remember. No tomorrow because there is nothing to anticipate.

You do not know happiness because you do not know sadness. You do not know companionship because you have never experienced loneliness.

There is simply awareness.

Then imagine a desire appearing:

What else could I experience?

With that question comes distinction.

Something and nothing. Self and other. Difference. Relationship. Possibility.

Perhaps consciousness eventually creates—or participates in—forms through which experience becomes possible.

Light. Matter. Bodies. Eyes. Hands. Taste. Touch. Birth. Death. Fear. Love. Stars. Oceans. Children. Friendships. Arguments. Dreams. Businesses. Bank accounts.

And two old friends quietly competing for forty years.

I do not know whether consciousness developed this way. I am not offering cosmology as science.

I am using imagination to explore a question.

That distinction matters. As I considered in Does It Have to Be Real?, a metaphor can be useful without being mistaken for proof.

If consciousness could somehow be imagined before all these distinctions, perhaps the miracle would not be winning the game.

Perhaps the miracle would be that there is a game at all.

From Possibility Into Experience

There is an ancient biblical phrase:

In the beginning was the Word.

I do not know what preceded matter, life, or consciousness, and I do not want to pretend that I do.

But the phrase makes me wonder whether creation, whatever its ultimate nature, involves movement from possibility into experience.

Thought into expression.

Potential into form.

The ocean into waves.

Water into raindrops.

And billions of years—or perhaps something stranger than our ordinary understanding of time—later, one temporary wave lies in bed at 5:08 in the morning worrying about whether his business idea is good enough.

From the ego’s perspective, that is a serious problem.

From the soul’s perspective, it may be rather amusing.

Maybe the Soul Is Amused

I like imagining that the soul is fascinated by being alive.

It enjoys sensation, discovery, relationship, and creation.

Perhaps it even appreciates problems—not because suffering is inherently good or should be romanticized, but because contrast gives experience dimension.

Hot makes cold meaningful.

Fear gives courage somewhere to appear.

Loss reveals what we value.

Failure gives success something to contrast against.

Perhaps even the ego is one of consciousness’s more fascinating creations: a psychological character constantly measuring, comparing, protecting, achieving, worrying, remembering, planning, and trying to make everything turn out correctly.

The soul does not necessarily need to destroy that character.

Maybe it smiles at it.

Look what consciousness created.

A Different Definition of Success

My friend’s financial success remains real. He played a particular game extraordinarily well. That reflects talent, persistence, judgment, timing, opportunity, and perhaps some luck. It deserves respect.

But his success does not diminish mine, nor does mine diminish his.

Perhaps the deeper questions are not:

Who accumulated the most? Who received the most applause? Who appeared most impressive?

Perhaps they are:

Did I fully experience being alive?

Did I become more conscious through the experience?

Did I create more love than fear?

Did I increase intelligence rather than confusion?

Did I leave a little less unnecessary disorder—what I call entropy—behind me?

Did I learn about myself through my relationships?

Did I express something worthwhile through this temporary form?

Psychology sometimes distinguishes pleasure-centered well-being from eudaimonic well-being—well-being connected with meaning, purpose, growth, autonomy, and becoming more fully oneself. That is not identical to what I call the soul, but it points in a similar direction.

By that measure, success is not merely what I possess.

It is also what I become, contribute, experience, and express.

That may not be a competition at all.

Jesus and Buddha are not remembered primarily for their financial portfolios. They are remembered because their teachings continue to shape how people understand suffering, compassion, awareness, and the meaning of a human life.

Their examples do not prove one definition of success. They simply reveal how limited the financial definition can be.

The Wave Does Not Have to Win

The ocean-and-wave metaphor keeps returning throughout my exploration of the soul.

The ego looks at the other waves:

That wave is bigger than me.

That one is moving faster.

That one sold his company for millions.

I need to become a more impressive wave.

But the soul remembers what the wave temporarily forgets:

We are all water.

The purpose of a wave may not be to defeat the other waves. Perhaps it is to become fully the particular wave it is capable of becoming before returning to the ocean.

That does not make ambition meaningless. It changes its orientation.

I can still build 10KGuarantee. I can advertise it, improve it, question it, test it, and change it. I may discover that my friend was right about parts of it.

But the business no longer has to answer the terrifying question:

Was my life worthwhile?

That is too much responsibility to place on a business.

The ego can build the company.

The soul can decide why—and experience the building.

This resembles the paradox I explored in When Ego Discovers It Wins by Following the Soul: the ego may receive more of what it seeks when it stops treating those rewards as the final destination.

The ego wants success. The soul asks what success means.

The ego wants recognition. The soul seeks expression.

The ego measures the outcome. The soul experiences and grows through it.

The ego wants to know whether I won.

The soul seems delighted that I got to play.

Already Part of the Ocean

Lying in the darkness, slowly waking from a dream about who accomplished more, I notice something liberating.

Maybe success is not reaching a final place where I can prove that my life mattered.

Maybe the fact that I am here—aware, creating, loving, struggling, questioning, laughing, failing, learning, and participating in this temporary existence—is already part of the larger success.

The business still deserves honest evaluation. My choices still have consequences. Money still matters in the world where bills must be paid and people depend upon me.

But none of those facts requires me to confuse net worth with human worth.

The wave does not have to prove that it deserves to be part of the ocean.

It already is.

Research Notes

• Intrinsic and extrinsic aspirations: Research within self-determination theory distinguishes intrinsic goals such as growth, relationships, health, and community contribution from extrinsic goals such as wealth, fame, and image. Extrinsic achievement is not inherently bad, but prioritizing extrinsic goals over intrinsic ones is generally associated with poorer well-being.

• Eudaimonic well-being: Psychological research distinguishes feeling good from functioning well. Eudaimonic approaches emphasize purpose, personal growth, self-acceptance, autonomy, positive relationships, and meaningful engagement.

• Social comparison: Comparing ourselves with others can provide information and motivation, but it can also distort self-evaluation—especially when another person’s visible outcome becomes the standard for judging the worth of an entire life.

• Money and well-being: Money can materially improve security, choice, and quality of life, particularly when resources are limited. The argument in this writing is not that money is irrelevant; it is that money measures only part of a life.

• Metaphysics versus evidence: The pre-creation awareness, soul, and ocean imagery are philosophical thought experiments. Current science does not establish that consciousness existed before matter or survives death.

Sources

• Bradshaw, E. L., et al. (2023). “A Meta-Analysis of the Dark Side of the American Dream.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 124(4), 873–899.

• Ryan, R. M., and Deci, E. L. (2001). “On Happiness and Human Potentials: A Review of Research on Hedonic and Eudaimonic Well-Being.” Annual Review of Psychology, 52, 141–166.

• Ryff, C. D. (2023). “Contributions of Eudaimonic Well-Being to Mental Health Practice.” Mental Health and Social Inclusion.

• Kasser, T. (2016). “Materialistic Values and Goals.” Annual Review of Psychology, 67, 489–514.