SUCCESS PARADOX

BRIEF SUMMARY

Success can be a complex term to define. We all want to experience success in different ways. For some, this may be linked to money. For others, it may be about living a great life. Whatever type of success we seek, have we paved the right path to it?
The book, The Success Paradox: How to Surrender and Thrive in Business and Life, lays out a series of paradoxical strategies that will help us not only survive, but thrive. Personal anecdotes are beautifully woven with profound revelations that become a roadmap for how surrender can truly enable us to win in business and life.
Author Gary C. Cooper, along with Will T. Wilkinson, urges us to do the exact opposite of what we have done before and what we think we should do now. By laying out comprehensive exercises, they help us get out of our comfort zone, no matter how chaotic the beginning may seem.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN IN THIS SUMMARY

Three principles of the Success Paradox.
About powerful paradoxes that open new paths to success
How to incorporate the Success Paradox Lifestyle or SPL.
How to deliver and succeed in business and life.

ENTRANCE
Success is the achievement of a goal or goal. A paradox is an apparently absurd or self-contradictory statement or proposition that can be proven to be well-founded or true when investigated or explained. This book uses the power of paradoxes to help readers embark on the journey towards success that really matters. The book is organized in three parts, progressing through three chapters in the classic hero's journey.
Heroes often pass through a magical portal to a different dimension. Think Harry Potter or Avatar. They find a secret door, learn a spell to cast, and generally find a friend to guide them. Here is your door, your spell, your guiding friend, all in one paradoxical invitation: Start trying to do the exact opposite of what you have done before and what you think you should do.

EPISODE 1
Topic 1: 3 Principles
If we surrender our will to a higher power, the “surrender and win” approach is the call sign to true success.
Success Paradox Lifestyle (SPL) applies not only to our business life, but also to our entire life, and operates according to three principles: being original, being good and doing well.
"Being original", "What is most important to me?" It means asking the question. If you ask me, the most important thing for me right now is to be myself. Every addiction is an attempt to fix something inside with something outside. Changing things on the inside creates a ripple effect on the outside.
Your job should be about “doing good.” It should be about helping others as well as you. Being authentic flows through everything we do, helping others and creating abundance to share.
Profit is essential for growth and personal, institutional and cultural health. However, accumulation should not be our primary goal. “Doing good” should be about helping people along the way.

Topic 2: Being Authentic
"The Father is a Man's Child", a work by William Wordsworth, means that the character we form as a child will remain with us in our adult lives. “A father is a man's child” means that fathers influence their children to become adults like or opposite them. It is necessary to disrupt this programming to become our true adult selves.
When my father died, I adopted his workaholic patterns and it almost killed me. I was trying to meet and exceed my father's goals. No matter how successful I was, I felt worthless because I didn't know who I was. When a doctor told me I had less than a month to live, I had to change.
I should have lived my own life, not my father's, no matter how wonderful it was. The most important thing for me was to be original. I remembered to use my pause button. Pausing may seem like shyness, but I've learned that my partners, employees, and family keep their trust in me when I pause for a moment to make sure of something. This has become an important new habit in my long journey to become a better person, a better businessman, and a better father to my four children.

Topic 3: Doing Good
We are separate individuals, right? The earth also appears flat and the sun appears to revolve around the earth. Things are rarely as they seem. We are individuals and, like waves in the ocean, we are connected and designed to help each other. So why do we often wait for an emergency to happen before we start doing this?
We are bombarded by a constant stream of media that explicitly or implicitly defines what is "normal" or "best." We are asked to compare ourselves to others and then buy things to be better or achieve more. Our modern and historical heroes (real and screen-sized) always win. We are afraid of showing ourselves as needy or incompetent. We fear being devalued or even ostracized if we dare to admit that we are not self-sufficient.
But self-sufficiency is a myth. We need each other. We learn our management strategies from our early family experiences. We are happiest when we help others. Empowering friendships support us on our path to becoming our authentic selves.

Topic 4: Doing a Good Job
Putting social profit first (people and environment) results in financial profit without harmful side effects, but only when we are in sync with the full profit system known as nature. Life is a profitable enterprise when everything and everyone wins.
For-profit companies increase share value for shareholders. Non-profit organizations create social value. Some companies, like ours, manage to do both. We are trying a new model we call "full profit". It's all about the profit-generating power of generosity.
Everything changes when we prioritize being authentic, which inspires us to help others and results in doing good work. We create a fundamentally different kind of profit: a reflection of our good will.
Imagine more and more individuals changing their relationship with money and turning their companies into purely for-profit businesses, putting profit before profit. They both do good and do good deeds. Profit is a reflection of doing good.

CHAPTER 2
Topic 5: Find Your Purpose
If you want more, if you want peace, if you want to feel like you are living your own life, if you want to truly enjoy your success and sleep well at night; If you feel ready to explore the true details of what surrender and winning looks like in your life and organization, then you're almost ready to rock and roll. But first you have to find your why. Why do you want to go this way and not another? In his book Start with Why, Simon Sinek says: "Very few people in companies can clearly articulate why they do what they do. By why I don't mean making money - that's an outcome. By why I mean what your purpose, your cause, or your belief is." "I mean. Why do you have a company? Why do you get out of bed every morning?"
Understanding and answering your “whys” is often the first step to making a positive change.

Topic 6: Lifestyle Centered on the Success Paradox
Self-interest pushes us to take shortcuts, but kicking the can doesn't get us rid of the can. Ultimately, we must be responsible for the repercussions of our actions. So why don't we do things right the first time?
According to recent brain research, "When you think about yourself, an area of the brain known as the medial prefrontal cortex is strengthened. The further in time you try to imagine your own life, the less activation you show in the MPFC. In other words, your brain is thinking about your future self that you don't know very well." and acts like someone you frankly don't care about."
What helps us develop our forward-thinking skills is boiling things down to what really matters. For example, in our business we focus on only three components: being original, doing good and doing well. These are the three principles of SPL and a formula that helps overcome this brain problem.

Topic 7: Giving Up
To have more, we have to get more, right?
The answer is "yes" only when we limit our wealth to personal possessions. Nature operates on the principle of shared wealth. It revolves around giving and receiving, our mutually profitable activities that maintain balance and health. So, as you move forward in your life and business, always remember to give back in any way you can.
Another thing to avoid is overdoing it or overexerting yourself. Our inability or refusal to rest creates a barrier to success. We can push as hard as we want, but even if we meet our financial goals, working won't be satisfying or enjoyable.Remember: give to receive, receive to give. “Breathing” is a simple metaphor to explain this paradox. During an asthma attack, it becomes difficult to exhale, so air becomes trapped in the lungs, meaning there is no room left to take in new air. This is what happens when we are reluctant to give. There is less room to take. Likewise, when we struggle to receive, we have less to give.

Topic 8: Sailing to Big Change
Striving for what we want often prevents us from seeing that we already have what we need. Being grateful for what is restores our vision.
We spend about a third of our lives sleeping, 230,000 hours over the course of an average lifetime, but most of us pay more attention and put much more money into our cars than our beds. Likewise, one-third of our lives are spent at work; an average of 90,000 hours before retirement. So why don't we invest more in our organizations' work environments?
Change is difficult. But once done, it can lead to truly amazing things. Fortunately for our organization, we learned this in time to make big changes before we were sabotaged by dysfunctional elements deeply ingrained in our company culture. Big change had to start from the top.

Topic 9: Responding to a Call for Help
We'd rather feel high than low, right? When we feel “high,” we are exploding the infinite potential of creative possibilities against the ceiling of a limitless heaven. When we feel “low,” as Jung says, we dip our toe into the underground world of our subconscious, where we become enlightened by making the darkness conscious.
Social media is like waking up in a mental hospital. You don't realize you're there until you try to get out. It may give us instant gratification, but at what cost? Addiction to quick hits of dopamine. But real life can't always be full of ups and downs.
Of course, social media can be a giant box full of “bad.” But it can also be an equally great opportunity to do “good.” Besides using social media for entertainment and fake friendships, we can harness its power to make the world a better place.

CHAPTER 3
Topic 11: What's Next for You?
Is reality objective or subjective? Why do things happen this way? We are not spectators; We are creative. And the best creative tool we have is our mind.
The business world is where I bring my talents to the table, and the same may be true for you, or you may find success doing something completely different like music, dance, or snowboarding! If our education system were what it should be, our uniqueness would be encouraged rather than restricted, and we would learn how to use our talents for the good of society.
But what happens when your mind's connection with universal intelligence is blocked? We prioritize “doing” over “being” and exercise our will in a way that is disconnected from the source of life – often with good intentions – but we know where paving the way will lead us.
Using your mind, map and compass to master SPL requires determination and follow through. It requires creating your map and compass and erasing the structural tension between your current situation and your preferred vision of the future.

Topic 12: What's Next for Your Organization?
Seeing is believing, right?
But it turns out the opposite is also true. “Implicit bias” is a term that describes how our brains can blind us to the obvious when what we’re looking for conflicts with what we believe we should see. When it comes to determining what the next step will be for your organization, be sure to take advantage of our 18 best recommendations for implementing SPL in your organization:
- House cleaning before growing up
- Promote growth
- Develop your multi-year strategic plan
- Formulate your vision, mission and values
- Develop your senior leadership team
- Create a succession plan for all senior leaders
- Transparency
- Communication
- Moving from isolated silos to collaborative teams
- Use publicly visible scorecards - Improve your employee orientation process
- Continue to focus on people first
- Develop realistic performance standards
- Focus on purpose by staying true to your vision, mission and values
- Be so responsible, successful and accountable that PE partners do not feel the need to intervene
- Stop hanging
- Celebrate and appreciate your wins

RESULT: SURRENDER AND WIN
The end justifies the means, right?
This traditional approach invites conflict between personal and organizational values. In fact, what we do along the way will always show up in our final product. Chefs know this. Salt tastes different from sugar. Each ingredient affects taste.
So embrace the lifestyle. Stay true to your vision, mission and values. Live the principles of "Be, do, share". Your results will naturally reflect your process. Remember that the end is a beginning. To experience the effectiveness of the Success Paradox for yourself, you will need to trust the process. Enjoy trying out what you've learned and be surprised by the wonderful things you'll discover about yourself and your organization!