Watch and listen as John Mackey and Dr. Marc Gafni explore a new vision of Success for the new millennium.

John Mackey is co-CEO of Whole Foods, and, together with Dr. Raj Sisodia, is co-author of Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business. Marc Gafni is President of the Center for Integral Wisdom and author of Your Unique Self: The Radical Path to Personal Enlightenment.

In this dialogue, John and Marc track the success literature, and the many meanings of the word Success, back through history. They conclude, in Marc’s words from the dialogue, that “[success] has to be inclusive and at the same time have a hierarchy. That means it’s got to include the best of traditional, modern, and postmodern wisdom, the best of Success 0, Success 1.0, and Success 2.0 – and yet it must offer something larger.”

Marc Gafni in the dialogue:

“So that’s where we are, Success 3.0, an Integral view that’s got to be compelling. It’s got to be an evolutionary attractor. It’s got to be powerful. It’s got to have an alluring quality. It’s got to be an invitation. It’s got to be a myth that’s worthy. It’s got to be a new vision of what the Jedi Knight is. So, Integral 3.0, what might that look like?”

Stream the video here and read the transcript below:

Transcript:

Marc       John, good to see you.

John        Good to see you too, Marc.

Marc       Success 3.0. So we’re here to kind of map what success might look like, and I was thinking about it this morning as I got up. Do you remember Citizen Kane, that movie, Orson Welles?

John        Yeah.

Marc       I think he played it, directed it, the whole thing. And remember how it opens with this image of him dying, and he says, “Rosebud,” and the reporter kind of searches, like, “What’s rosebud?” And you track his whole life. Then the movie begins with a scene of him sledding, delighted, happy, and then he learns that he gets this major inheritance of money and power, and the whole story plays out. William Randolph Hearst is kind of the image. Then he dies, says, “Rosebud,” and you see he’s living in this mansion with kind of grotesque art and kind of strange icons, and you see being thrown into the fire in the last scene of the movie the sled that he was sledding on when he was seven, and the sled’s called Rosebud. And it’s of course this critique of modern notions of success. Here’s William Randolph Hearst, the most massively powerful successful human being in America, and along comes Orson Welles and says, “That’s not success.”

And that’s really where we are today. We’re kind of looking for what does success mean? How does it move us? How does it guide us? And we’re looking for success 3.0, meaning an evolutionary higher vision of success. So let’s start the conversation and maybe begin with ground zero and begin to see if we can map notions of success. We’ve had this conversation, and we’re really having this as kind of the ground conversation, the matrix conversation for our upcoming summit. So maybe take it away, take us to ground zero of traditional notions of success. What does that mean? What does the map look like? And we’ll go back and forth as we play.

John        Sure. Well, I think that every culture has its success somewhat bound by culture, bound by the values and aspirations of a particular society or culture, and that largely depends upon the altitude or the consciousness of where that society’s at. So if you look at a traditional, say, religious society, then success was generally someone who was obedient to the will of God. They were an individual who followed the traditions of the society and did those to the best of his or her ability, and were good citizens in those communities based on the values of those communities, and that would be considered a successful life. A successful person was one who would obey essentially the Commandments of the revealed religious truth. So we see that in a more traditional society that would be a definition of success.

Marc       So let me stay with you on traditional. Let’s kind of go each one. So ground zero would be – we’re going to success 3.0 – so ground zero we’re calling traditional. And you’re pointing out – so let me just go slow here – obedience is a big one. There’s a larger frame of value.

John        You could start before even traditional.

Marc       You could.

John        Do you want to start at traditional? Because you could go back pre-traditional.

Marc       Let’s start at traditional. Maybe we’ll do like a second mapping. First let’s start at ground zero, which I think you’re pointing out that’s really important, that ground zero actually starts before traditional.

John        Right.

Marc       Really important point, so let’s do that. Let’s come back to traditional. Give us before traditional.

Download the whole transcript here: