As college students, we are bombarded by friends, professors, and even parents asking us questions like, “How’s the job search going?” or “Are you going for mock interviews?” or “What kind of car do you want to have when you finally ‘make it’?” More than this, we are surrounded by organizations on our campuses that focus on these things. I like to summarize this by saying that our colleges are uber-focused on helping students discover questions about the external world.
As I began to realize this, and in-turn reflect on it, I noticed something else: Our colleges, school organizations, professors, and even parents, rarely focus on helping us discover the answers to the questions about our own INTERNAL world. The questions I’m alluding to are questions like, “What’s my purpose?”, “Why am I not accomplishing what I set out to accomplish?”, “Who do I want to become?”, or “What do I want my legacy to be?” Seriously, when is the last time you have had a discussion with someone in college about any of those seemingly metaphysical topics? The answer is probably either never or you can’t remember.
As I thought about these two realizations, I made a correlation: Students are told from every angle to focus on getting jobs, making money, getting straight A’s, etc., yet statistics show that student depression, anxiety, and deteriorating mental health is on the rise. That’s when I realized we had it all backward. That’s when I thought, “If what society is promoting is only leading to a lack of fulfillment, poor mental health, and seemingly mediocre results for the majority of the population, why not create an organization that focuses on the complete opposite?”
HELL AND BACK
That’s when The Society of Growth and Success was born. I, along with a team, wanted to create an organization that focused on an “inside-out” approach as opposed to the “outside-in” approach we’ve been taught all of our lives.
This organization focuses on helping students, either in a collective workshop or in one-on-one sessions, discover who they are, what they value, what they are passionate about, how they can increase performance in every aspect of their life, how they can become more self-aware, how they can become happier and spread that joy onto other, and ultimately, how they could leave a lasting mark on the world.
For me, now about to graduate college in a month, this is how I’ve been able to be “successful.” I’ve been able to sustain a 4.0 GPA, be ranked a top 100 business student in America by Poets and Quants, be ranked the #3 ROTC cadet in the nation, and achieve many other things that society tells us is “success”, all while doing the opposite of what society tells us to do. I never focused on how much money I wanted to make, what car I wanted, or what job I wanted. Instead, I focused on what impact I wanted to make, how I was called to serve, and I could utilize my value system and God-given gifts to get the most out of life. Essentially, I focused on developing the “inside” and the “outside” success just flowed.
This, for me, enabled my success. I’m not bragging, and quite honestly, one could take all of the accolades away from me right now and I would be the same person because they do not define me. What defines me is the person I have become in the process.
The point I’m making is that our success in the external world is determined by the discovery of our internal world. That’s why I decided to start this organization. I saw the impact and success it enabled me to have and I wanted to share this with others.
Now, you may be wondering, “Well, who the hell are you to teach me?” My answer is simple: I don’t teach, and neither does anyone in the Society of Growth and Success. Simply, we facilitate conversation, and it is through the conversation that magic happens. Something as simple as discussing these topics in a group or with one other person is magical, and creating action plans to find the answers to such questions just intensifies the magical effect. People start to look at life from a different perspective. They start to learn more about themselves. They start to recognize AND actualize their truest potential. But best of all, they start to serve others.
The Society of Growth and Success is not “sexy.” We do not promote money, cars, etc. Instead, we promote the personal development of each individual so that he or she can go out into the world and be a beacon of light which inspires others. To us, this is true success. Service to the world, in our last moments, is all we will remember. What impact did you have on the world?
