My Definition Of Success

Welcome back to the list building lifestyle. I’m your host, Igor Kheifets, who is more successful, somebody who works a multiple seven figure job but hates it, or somebody who’s a bomb, but loves their life. I ponder this question, because I spend a lot of time and they spend a lot of energy and effort in order to try it and understand what I define as a success. Because as I went through the years and made lots of money and started and failed with businesses, and had my family and children and family life and everything else that’s in between, you know, when I gained weight and lost weight, I observed my life satisfaction levels. And what’s interesting is that my life satisfaction wasn’t always connected to my income, my fitness, or the quality of my relationship with my children, or with my wife, or my friends, oftentimes, it actually resulted in creating an inner conflict for me, which made me question myself a lot. Now, in this episode, I really want to answer the question, what is the definition of success? And how can you define what success means to you, because even if you make a lot of money, but you don’t feel successful, you’re probably not going to be satisfied. In life. In general, you’re probably not going to be on your deathbed thinking about all the money you’ve made. But instead, you’re going to be thinking about all the things you wished you’d done. So in this episode, I’m going to give you a couple of tools and a couple of questions that can guide you, when answering this once and for all, and helping you identify what the heck does it mean to you to be successful, and once you do, you’ll be able to align everything you’re doing to that one purpose and goal. And as a result, regardless of your income or your fitness, you will be able to finally start feeling successful instead of constantly trying to beat yourself up for not living up to some kind of expectation.

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I’m Igor Kheifets and this is the list building lifestyle. The podcast for anyone who wants to build a wildly profitable email lists working from home. If you’d like to make six figures travel the world and help people improve their lives in the process. This podcast is for you. I also invite you to claim a free copy of my bestselling book, the list building lifestyle Confessions of an email millionaire at www.igorsbook.com. Get the free book plus $3,000 bonus package that includes my best capture page templates, email, swipe files, and traffic blueprints, visit www.igorsbook.com for details. And now it’s time to claim your list building lifestyle.

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The way to define success is really nothing to do with money. And I know it sounds a bit weird coming from a guy who has been focused on making money for so many years and who lives a pretty lavish lifestyle, drives a Porsche, lives in a big house, etc. But for me, the definition of success changed over the years when I started out, success was purely money. That was really it, it was status and money. And for me, the social filter that created status was money. Therefore, for me, success was pretty much about my income. And if I was making more than the other guy, I consider myself to be more successful than the other guy. The only other thing that I think growing up defines success for me as well, which was kind of tied to money. And but that was a bet like just a wrong idea that I had growing up as a woman. You know, I’m a very typical sort of conservative guy who grew up with very conservative values. So you know, I’ve always dreamed of having, you know, a family, what they would call a trophy wife, right? Something that would be frowned upon today. But I grew up watching the media, and watching people around me and anyone who was successful. And obviously I would look at guys because I’m a guy, so I would not be able to like mentally and physically. Just because of how my system works, I wouldn’t be able to model successful women, which again, I didn’t really see too many successful women at the time. Because in Ukraine in the 90s you really don’t see too many successful women. It’s a very difficult environment. And the closest thing that I’ve seen to a successful woman was our school principal, because she was always wearing these suits. She had a radio phone, and she was always walking around like the boss. So that was probably the only example of a successful woman that I’ve seen. But growing up it was mostly guys. And you know anyone who was anyone who was successful, they drove a really expensive car. They made a lot of money. They usually hung out around criminals because back in the day in the 90s in Ukraine, there was lots of racketeering, like the mafia was real. Okay, like if you were just a normal person who showed any kind of success, you know, if you had a good house or an expensive car for whatever reason, they would be knocking on your door. And they will be claiming you know that you owe them 20% for protection, it would just happen, inevitable. So, growing up, my idea of success was that a successful guy is somebody who’s got a beautiful woman, and is making lots of money. And the thing is that over the years, I learned that truly successful people actually live a life by their own design, rather than being hostage to some kind of idea of what their life needs to look like. Like if somebody’s working a really cool job that pays them a lot of money. Let’s say they’re an engineer, and they work for Apple, which is something that a lot of people consider to be a success. But they hate the job. They hate their boss, they hate office politics, and they have to commute for an hour each way. And they really do not like to work there, so I don’t think that person is successful. But to the same extent, if there’s some guy who lives in Nebraska, who lives in a tiny little house in the middle of nowhere, and he’s got like three goats and five cows, and he’s perfectly satisfied with everything he’s got, and he wakes up in the morning with no internal conflict, that guy is successful. To the same extent, by the way, I want to touch upon something a little bit controversial. And that’s the way society now perceives women. You know, like my wife, she made a decision early on that she wanted a family. And to her the definition of success was to get married to a good guy, and have two kids, which she did. But now I’ve noticed that since moving to Canada, she has been exposed to a different mindset about what success is. And she became confused. You know, she started questioning her life choices. And she was like, am I supposed to go start a business now? Like, am I a quote unquote, a failure for having, you know, committed to a family. But you see, that’s, that’s such a weird idea. Because if she never really wanted to start a business, if she never really wanted to be, you know, independent in the way she makes money, if she never really wanted to become this aggressive, April, you know, a type personality, woman who goes in and just dominates the corporate world with something, why would she need to be measured by that yardstick, you don’t judge a fish, by its ability to climb trees, that is to say that a fish needs to be swimming in the sea. And, you know, some other animal will be or like a squirrel will be climbing the tree, right? You don’t see the squirrel questioning itself and be like, should I be swimming right now? Why? Well, because all these other animals are swimming, maybe I shouldn’t be swimming. No. And in that way, I think back in the early 1400s, or something, if you were born in a farmer’s family, and then you were like the son or daughter to a farmer, and you were growing up believing that is your life mission to be a farmer. I think those people were much happier and less confused about life in general. They knew you knew what they wanted to do, and they just did it. Right? Today, we are so confused. We were being fed so much bullshit about what we’re supposed to be doing. We’re who are we supposed to be? You know, especially the self-help industry basically tells you that unless you’re doing something extraordinary with your life, then you’re a fuckup, for lack of a better word, that I think we’re really taking this too far. You know, some people like to work, my neighbor is working a high paying job. Well, I wouldn’t say high paying but like, low six figure job, okay, which for where we live is, it’s honestly not enough. But he works a low six figures job for a huge company. He leaves her work at 9am or 8am. He comes back at 4pm. He’s got two kids, he drives a Volvo. And you can tell the guy is miserable. You can tell the guy is miserable. Now, he can probably benefit from something like what we do, and really, you know, take on a different career path. But to the same extent, another neighbor has a very similar job with a different company. That’s also pretty big. Actually, both of them work for media companies. They’re just competitors. And one of them is in software. The other one is in project management. So the software guy has three kids, drives a Toyota and makes a low six figures. His wife is a nurse, I think, and you can tell he’s happy like you go and have some barbecue with the other fella. And the way he talks about his work the way he talks about his life. And the way he responds, when I talk about my work in my life, you can tell he’s satisfied. And I think he’s successful. And the only reason I think he is successful is because there is no internal conflict for him. He doesn’t wake up in the morning, and he doesn’t go to bed at night, thinking what if? Or he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who has regrets about where he is today? I think that’s how I would define success. Like if he is on his deathbed, in 50 years, and he looks back on his life and he doesn’t question his career choice. I think this guy’s a success. And the same can be said about any other life choice. Like I got a good friend. He’s, I would call them like,

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like, like a wonder kid. Like, he’s just one like, you see these people once in a generation. And I was blessed to work closely with him. And he actually helped us in our solid agency. So much like, honestly, I don’t know what we would have done without him. Like he built some stuff. He’s a coder, he built some stuff. That’s I’m talking military grade level sort of stuff like incredible, incredibly brilliant guy. Now, one time he questioned me, he said, Hey, why don’t you like it? Why did you start a family? So Young? I started my family when I was 24. I had my first child at 24. And, you know, he said, why don’t you and he’s like the opposite, right? So he’s more of a pickup artist type. He basically travels to a different country, every three days, sleeps with lots of different women, maybe at this point is, you know, not just women, I really don’t know, he doesn’t tell me but he’s basically every time he’s in a different country, with different people loves to party, and is really successful at what he does. So he questioned my life choice and said, Why did you, you know, don’t you regret? And to which I said, Look, I made my choice. It was a very organic decision for me, I didn’t have to question myself, I didn’t have to ponder about it, or write about it in my journal. I kind of was set on this lifestyle, before I even kind of stepped into adulthood, maybe it was part of my conditioning growing up. But my decision, like I’m full with that decision, I made the decision and I’m complete with it. There’s nothing that tears me apart and says, No, I shouldn’t be there, or I shouldn’t be here. Or if I’m a super successful internet marketer, I shouldn’t be living in Dubai, and driving a Lamborghini. No, I’m perfectly content with living in Toronto, a pretty boring suburb kind of lifestyle. And, you know, taking my Porsche out for a spin every now and again to the track. I’m cool with that. Right? Obviously, there are things that I would change about my life, I would probably move to a warmer location near a racetrack, so I can go to the track every day. But like, right now, as I’m waiting for my Canadian passport, that’s, you know, I got higher priorities. And this is what it really comes down to when it comes to life satisfaction and definition of success. Every single one of us has a hierarchy of values. And whether we like it or not, we automatically do things that are high on that hierarchy. So for me, you know, my work and my family are really, really, really high on that hierarchy. And therefore, they dictate every single life decision that I make. And it was like that, even before I became successful, again, successful by the definition that other people would give it. Same thing for my friend, you know, the brilliant coder guy, his hierarchy of values is a little bit different. So he puts his work real high, just like me. However, he doesn’t have family values, his value is probably six, or, you know, something to that extent. So he puts it higher. Therefore, he invests more time and effort into that. But what I’m saying is, you are successful if you if you’re doing what is high on your hierarchy, rather than trying to suppress parts of your hierarchy of values, because you think that it’s going to be frowned upon or otherwise, you know, wouldn’t fit into some sort of an idea or a matrix that you were led to believe is right for you. Thank you for listening to the list building lifestyle, get access to the previous episodes transcript of today’s show, as well as other exclusive content at listbuildinglifestyleshow.com. Also, remember to claim your free copy of my bestselling book at www.igorsbook.com. It explains how I made millions with list building starting from scratch. Plus, I’ll give you $3,000 worth of free bonuses, including my best landing page templates, email swipe files and traffic. Go to www.igorsbook.com. Now to claim your free package