Catalyst for Conceptualizing Life ROI:

My mother turned 70 the year after my father passed. She did not want to celebrate her birthday, so we waited until she was ready. In 2016, I took her on our first Mom & Son trip to Vancouver and Seattle. We had an amazing time in Vancouver! Like two old friends on a road trip, we enjoyed deep conversations and favorite songs; we recollected old days and appreciated beautiful sceneries. We ate delicious food prepared mostly by my mom; however, on a few occasions, she reluctantly allowed me to take her out to a restaurant.

After Vancouver, we drove down to Seattle for a day of sightseeing. We completed the typical touristy activities before visiting a dear family friend. Exhausted from our journey, I squeezed in a quick nap before meeting my friends Doug and Hailey for dinner.

Doug and Hailey brought their precious baby girl with them. We sat on the patio, enjoyed our dinner, and caught up on life. As we were all getting up to leave, I blacked out and became unconscious.

According to Doug, my head hit the patio’s cement with a thunderous sound. Doug said he expected to see blood gushing out of my head immediately. That did not happen, thanks to being “hard headed” all my life. What did happen was that my heart stopped. Luckily, my hard head landed next to the feet of a retired nurse having dinner with her husband. She immediately jumped in to take my pulse, and when she did not detect a heartbeat, she directed Doug to start mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, while she started the chest compression. By the time she had my heart restarted, the paramedics arrived. This complete stranger and my dear friend Doug saved my life that day. If I had blacked out just a few minutes later when I was driving, I would have died on a highway somewhere in Seattle. I felt blessed and thankful, but then fear set in when, after multiple tests and procedures, the doctors could not determine precisely why this happened to me. I wasn’t sure if I had days, weeks, or months left, as the same thing could happen again when a retired nurse isn’t nearby.

None of us know for how long we will live. However, having gone through my close call with death, I became keener and more sensitive to my mortality. Rather than living in fear, I wanted to make the best of the days or years I have left. So, I set out to define meaning and purpose for my life and explore all that I would like to experience before I kick the bucket for good.

Defining Success for Me:

One of the first things I set out to do was to name and define all that I aspire to in life. I asked myself these questions:

• “What do I want?”

• “Why do I want that?”

• “Is that really what I want, or is it what society, culture, and family expect of me?

These are some of the honest questions I asked myself. The inner dialogue wasn’t smooth or friendly in the beginning, but it got much better as I began finding clarity in what I wanted in life.

I innately knew my success would not be grounded in materialistic or destination-driven definitions, but it was still difficult to grasp how to define in my own terms this common word we use every day. After an arduous and methodical process, I eventually identified three major success criteria; satisfaction, fulfillment, and happiness. Here are the definitions for each:

• Satisfaction: Functional achievement of tasks and completion of short-term goals.

• Fulfillment: Delivery of meaningful value and validation of impact experienced.

• Happiness: Pure experience of bliss and authentic moments of engulfment.

In pragmatic applications, here is how I went about practicing these definitions in my daily life. For satisfaction, I simply had to find work that would pay me market rate compensation for services I rendered per my employer’s specifications. A simple transaction of delivering functional value for payment. If my compensation was lower than market, satisfaction would not be achieved.

Fulfillment is achieved when the person I serve experiences the emotional value and impact above and beyond the functional value. The validation of the impact must be offered by those I serve, without solicitation from me to ensure the fidelity of the fulfillment.

Happiness was the toughest to put into practice. I could not remember the last time I asked myself what makes me happy. The most certain activity I could recall was spending time with my family. So, that’s where I started. I was also super critical in assessing which activities brought me happiness. I did not want to dilute, discount, or cheat myself out of an authentic experience of happiness.

Please remember that these are my own definitions that serve myself. Please refrain from judging or criticizing them based on your own perspective, preference, or experience. I encourage you to pursue your own versions and definitions of success. However, if any of these can be helpful in defining and pursuing your own success, please be my guest.

As any entrepreneur would do, I chose to take the most critical success factor and test it through the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) modeling. I chose happiness for my MVP because it was the toughest to put into practice. One year after my blackout, I planned my first happiness activity. My family, including my mom, traveled to Pagosa Springs, Colorado. We rented a large cabin, made day trips to nearby landmarks, watched movies, prepared and ate delicious meals together. While I was fully engaged in family activities and conversations, I did not stop myself to think whether I was happy. Because that would actually interrupt my authentic engulfment of happiness. It was later when reflecting and reviewing the photos that validated what I was experiencing in those moments were pure and genuine happiness. The evidence of happiness I was experiencing is captured in this photo. We had just finished taking the compulsory family photo at the front of Mesa Verde National Park entrance for social media posting. I fumbled with the selfie stick I was using and accidentally took this photo. All the smiles were genuine and not posed, especially my mom’s and mine. My mother is the OG of “RBF.” She is who I inherited my “RMF” (Resting Mitch Face) from and later perfected it growing up in New York City. I do not know what muscles I have to use to smile like this. You could not pay me enough money in the world for me to smile like this on command. There are very few photos in which my mom smiles this big. This evidence of happiness my family and I experienced that day inspired me to keep planning, experiencing, and tracking my happiness.