A friend recommended Conscious Accomplishment by Scott Britton, and I’ll admit I was skeptical. The subtitle is How to Use Personal Achievement for Spiritual Growth, and I felt immediate tension with it. I’ve been part of starting several organizations, and I’ve watched a few side projects grow into income for my family. I was also a pastor for many years, and now I work as a spiritual director and wisdom guide. So I know both worlds, and I know how often personal achievement and spiritual growth feel like they’re competing with each other. If it hadn’t come from a trusted friend, I’m not sure I would have picked it up off the shelf. I’m glad I did. It’s not tied to any one religion, either, so there’s something here whatever tradition you come from, or if you don’t have one.
In the video I walk through three ideas that stayed with me. The first is the true self. Britton was told, “Your true self is the real you. It’s the eternal part of your being behind all the things you think you are.” We lose touch with it in all the effort to fit into the world, covering it over with a false self. The second is living from an open heart. “Our factory setting is the joy of an open heart,” he writes, and when the heart is open it can show its natural qualities, like trust, love, and gratitude. The third is the one in the subtitle: that achievement and spiritual growth are “mutually supportive aspects of an integrated whole.” The healthier you are spiritually, the more you have the imagination and energy to offer something fruitful to the world. And the more you grow, the more you see that you aren’t defined by what you do. Even when you pursue something and fail, you don’t lose touch with your purpose or yourself.
I do have two mild critiques. The practices he shares, like meditation and journaling, can feel prescriptive, as if you need to do all of them. Treat them as a taste of what’s available, since wisdom traditions have been offering practices like these for centuries. And the book is very internal. I love reflective practices, but I think spiritual growth happens relationally too, and we don’t do it on our own. That’s why I’d pair this with David Brooks’s How to Know a Person. Read together, they make a good start on becoming a more whole and authentic person. Have you read Conscious Accomplishment? Do you think personal achievement and spiritual growth belong together, or are they at odds?