The piece you’re about to read originally appeared in my paid newsletter, Chasing Hemingway. I literally never make these puppies public so…

Lucky you.

Anyone who is reasonably intelligent and who has enough dog in them to throw themselves at something for a decade without losing vigor, will eventually look up to see they’ve fought and torn and ripped themselves towards a place worth celebrating; a place they are tremendously proud of.

In this way, finding success these days is simple: you pick something, and then you work and work and work until you have it.

However, finding success without costing yourself love, happiness, peace and, perhaps, yourself, is what seems to be the real challenge.

A couple of weeks back (at the time of the writing of this piece) I tweeted...

"Think about longer-term success as saving and eventually cashing in on short-term pleasure."

I still think it to be true. Though, I'd add a slight caveat...

"Think about long-term success as saving and eventually cashing in on short-term pleasure *and happiness."

Some of the most spectacular minds of our generation are on their second and third marriages, which goes to show that success doesn't just cost us pleasure but it can, if we're not careful, cost us our lives and our happiness.

So, I think success nowadays is discovering a way to succeed while living a life that you're proud of.

I could be wrong –– I recognize that I have a great deal more thinking to do on this topic –– but I think this can be achieved by vying for success not anxiously nor reactively but calmly.

If you look back at your life and reflect on the moments where you’ve experienced tremendous financial or vocational prosperity, chances are you probably felt fairly calm, clear and collected in the midst of this prosperity

I'd liken it to when Robert Downey Junior's Sherlock Holmes finds himself surrounded by adversaries and, suddenly, everything becomes increasingly slow and his next move becomes abundantly clear and he knows where to grab and punch and throw and kick to fend off his attackers.

Yes, you’ve worked up a sweat.

Yes, your heartbeat is kicking in your chest like an angry mule.

But, there is also a sense of clarity there, too.

You instinctively know your next move and your body and heart seem to be acting before your mind has had the chance to cement the pair in place.

Some of the most successful people I know –– who also seem to enjoy a level of happiness and calm that Gandhi would applaud –– enjoy a sense of clarity with their work that borders on precognition.

I’ve attempted to replicate this clarity in my own life and when I’ve triumphed, I've noticed that I find myself consulting my stomach over my brain when looking for direction.

To put this another way...

When it felt like I should do something, I did it. When it felt like I shouldn’t do something, I didn't do it.

I know that feels a bit simplistic but, seriously, think back to the moments in your life when things have gone terribly wrong or wonderfully right and tell me you haven’t known these outcomes long before they ever became outcomes.

I once date a woman in college who I knew was the second coming of satan but she had a pair of legs that could bend a steel beam into a bow and a pair of breasts that could cause a traffic jam and a sweet-talking tongue that could get an army of snakes slithering at her command and being that I was twenty-one-years-old and that like most men at this age, I thought with my cock, I listened to my cock rather than my intuition and I paid the price.

So many of us know it is fire before we walk into it, but we walk into it anyway despite this knowing.

On the contrary, when I was beckoned to Minsk, Belarus at the age of twenty-three to consult with a handful of startups... while I was so scared I could have shit a thousand bricks, I laced up my Red Wings and hopped on that big jet plane and I went... not necessarily because I wanted to but because I knew in my heart of hearts that it was what I was supposed to do.

To this day, it was one of, if not the, single greatest springboard of my life and work as a writer.

So, if it's success you're after, it's worthwhile to recognize that you already know how it is you're supposed to get there.

Chances are, you've known for quite some time.

It's just that, for whatever reason, you're not listening to yourself.

That, or you're entertaining the lip-stick-stained travesties, telling yourself they're angels and not guillotines.

But, I digress.

By Cole Schafer.