How do you know you are successful in life?
You can judge your accomplishments by other people's standards or by your own definition of success.
So the first step to success is knowing what success means to you. Otherwise, you won't even know when you get there, right?
Suppose your environment seems to expect you to make a lot of money in a corporate job, stay home with the kids, or be thin. You've tried and failed to live up to those expectations, and now you feel like a loser and blame yourself for not being the way they want you to be.
Or you tried and succeeded, now being the perfect corporate employee, the perfect mom, the perfect daughter, but you still feel discontent. Your supposed success makes you disgusting and you feel there is more to your life than chasing after those goals that someone outside of you has defined as worthy of achieving.
In both cases, you are going through the same thing:you feel like a failure and unhappy, because you haven't yet given your own definition of success a fair chance.
How about searching for what's most important to you?
Maybe you would really like to live in a house in the countryside, closer to nature.
You long to meet that person with whom you feel an instant soul connection and live together happily ever after.
Or you want to own and drive a fast, sexy and super expensive car. (Your definition of success may just as well overlap with what your society considers success. The important thing is that YOU feel drawn to it.)
Wouldn't it be a lot easier to pursue goals you're on fire for? What could be better, wouldn't pursuing these goals do you good in itself, even if you hadn't achieved them yet?
The company's definition of success versus yours
The difference between going after the socially imposed definition of success (assuming you don't deeply approve of it) and your own is this:
For the first type of success, you have to do things you hate (suck the boss) in order to get something you're supposed to be happy about (get that promotion). This promotion may turn you on for a while, but if it doesn't match what you really value on the inside, you won't feel any less miserable than before.
For the other type of success, one that you can pursue wholeheartedly, you need to do things that make you feel good in themselves!
Say you really want to turn your love of gardening into a career. While there will certainly be doubts and fears about how you're going to get there, every time you take action it will be something to do with gardening (which you love) or something you don't. wouldn't normally enjoy (like dealing with the bureaucracy of setting up your business) but that you'll find meaningful because it brings you closer to living the life you love.
Success is possible here, now
So every day you do a little bit of what makes you feel good, which is a form of success in itself. You don't have to wait to be happy until you reach your goal. You can be happy now. Every day you feel like a success, and chances are your actions will get you somewhere.
Isn't that the most rewarding and immediate path to success?
And isn't your happiness and passion for life worth much more than earning admiration for achieving something you never really wanted?
Photo credit :Alter1fo
