{"id":13152,"date":"2012-06-04T05:06:14","date_gmt":"2012-06-04T05:06:14","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2012-06-05T02:06:47","modified_gmt":"2012-06-05T02:06:47","slug":"Contented-Achievers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?p=13152","title":{"rendered":"Contented Achievers"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Contented Achiever: How to Get What You Want and Love What You Get<\/em><\/strong>, by Chris Crouch, Don Hutson, and George Lucas, is a book I recently purchased for my Amazon Kindle ebook reader. Much of it revolves around a discussion of being contented or not and successful or not, two important characteristics of human life. I agreed with most of it and recommend it highly.<\/p>\n

In the ongoing game of life, we play the cards we are dealt.<\/strong> We seem to win or lose. We respond both to winning or losing and to how well we feel we are playing the game. \u201cIt\u2019s not whether you win or lose, but how you played the game\u201d is one approach. \u201cWinning is everything\u201d is another.<\/p>\n

Our external results are conventionally labeled \u201csuccess\u201d or \u201cfailure,\u201d and are measured in terms of money, fame, power, honor\u2026. Our internal state of mind can be characterized as falling somewhere between \u201cfulfillment\u201d and \u201cfrustration,\u201d largely affected by our personal evaluation of our degree of success. In his poem \u201cIf,\u201d Rudyard Kipling advised us to meet triumph and disaster with equanimity, to \u201ctreat those two impostors just the same.\u201d Hard to do.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Contented Achiever<\/em>\u2018s authors, Crouch and crew, present a chart with degree of fulfillment running vertically (y-axis) and degree of success running horizontally (x-axis). This gives four quadrants, which they use to illustrate types of outcomes.<\/p>\n

High success and low satisfaction<\/strong> (\u201cI can\u2019t get no satisfaction\u201c) typify many \u201csoap-opera types,\u201d Unhappy Beautiful People. They have it all, except happiness. Avoid this.<\/p>\n

Low success and low satisfaction<\/strong> typify life\u2019s losers, “Tar Pit People,” some who earned unhappiness, some merely victims. <\/p>\n

Low success and high satisfaction<\/strong> describe the group the authors labeled \u201cOxymoron People,\u201d because not succeeding and yet being happy seems contradictory. The authors noted, \u201cOxymoron People may be artists, writers, engineers, parents of a dozen foster children\u2026.they are living the life they choose and feeling happy\u2026.\u201d Viewed from their own perspective, they have redefined \u201csuccess\u201d and moved into our fourth category.<\/p>\n

\u201cContented Achievers\u201d have succeeded and are satisfied.<\/strong> Be there, if you can, and most of us can. Ambitious, but not infeasible, goals and a philosophical approach to life can put one here.<\/p>\n

I have written this for the readers of asiancemagazine.com partly because Asian Americans, such as my own step-children, are among America\u2019s most successful people, and deserve to enjoy satisfaction, rather than enduring dissatisfaction from the gap between their achievements and their aspirations.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Douglas Winslow Cooper, Ph.D., is the author of Ting and I: A Memoir of Love, Courage, and Devotion<\/em><\/strong>, available from amazon.com, bn.com, and Outskirts Press. He is a freelance writer and a book-writing mentor. Contact: douglas@tingandi.com<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Contented Achiever: How to Get What You Want and Love What You Get, by Chris Crouch, Don Hutson, and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2663,"featured_media":72448,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"magazineBlocksPostFeaturedMedia":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg","medium":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","medium_large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","1536x1536":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","2048x2048":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-highlighted-post":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-featured-post-medium":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-featured-post-small":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x90.jpg","colormag-featured-image":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-default-news":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg","colormag-featured-image-large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-block-extra-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-small-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-medium-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg"},"magazineBlocksPostAuthor":{"name":"michaelly","avatar":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/957a72dc0c08f14979f0d258f5a5d70644519bea0e589bfbc83999b24053b763?s=96&d=mm&r=g"},"magazineBlocksPostCommentsNumber":"17","magazineBlocksPostExcerpt":"The Contented Achiever: How to Get What You Want and Love What You Get, by Chris Crouch, Don Hutson, and","magazineBlocksPostCategories":["News"],"magazineBlocksPostViewCount":538,"magazineBlocksPostReadTime":3,"magazine_blocks_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg",113,170,false],"medium":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg",113,170,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg",113,150,true]},"magazine_blocks_author":{"display_name":"michaelly","author_link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?author=2663"},"magazine_blocks_comment":17,"magazine_blocks_author_image":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/957a72dc0c08f14979f0d258f5a5d70644519bea0e589bfbc83999b24053b763?s=96&d=mm&r=g","magazine_blocks_category":"News<\/a>","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2663"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13152\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/72448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}