What Does Success Mean to You?
How to Get That Feeling of Success
Most of us want to look successful, feel successful and be successful. We would like money, fame, excellence, great relationships or power.
But how many of us stop to ask ourselves “what is success for me?”
What pops into your thought bubble when you are asked about success? Do you envision oodles of money, a mansion, and a fancy sports car? Those items are great, but what about a deeper sense of success – a success beyond your wildest dreams?
If you’re like most people, you’ve probably heard some success stories where folks have gone from rags to riches scenarios.
However, and more importantly, there are even better stories out there.
Like the stories of business people leaving their corporate world to go and sell ice cream somewhere in the Caribbean. They, too, are abundantly happy and successful.
Table of Contents
How to Define Your Success
Some people want to live in a large house overlooking the ocean, while others want to live in a cottage by the lake or down at the farm.
Success is a personal definition – for some, it’s lots of money, and for others it’s fulfilling relationships, and for others it’s personal freedom. Some people want to live in a large house overlooking the ocean, while others want to live in a cottage by the lake or down at the farm.
First, realize that you are already successful. You have accomplished many positive things. You can build on those successes or go in an entirely new direction.
Don’t think you are a failure because you haven’t earned a certain amount of money, or met your Prince Charming, for then you will never be happy.
Bottom line – success is what you say it is.
Let’s start with defining your own success. Here are a few tips on how to define what success is to you and only you:
Yes, we all have an initial vision of what success looks like to us. However, taking this notion one step further, ask yourself some key questions. First, why do you want to achieve this picture of success?
Now, dig deep down and quietly meditate on your true calling, passion and purpose.
Everyone has a calling. You may not have discovered it yet, but it’s only a matter of time before you are one of millions asking yourself, “Is there something more to life than this?” And that is when you can explore your own purpose.
But don’t wait for that moment of disillusionment. Seek your purpose now.
What kind of success do you yearn for?
• Do you wish to reach thousands of people and make a difference?
• Do you wish to help hundreds solve a problem you have experience with?
• Do you value personal freedom over material objects and items?
Start getting in touch with your passions and your true thoughts about success. What is the most important thing to you? Here are some possibilities to start your own thoughts:
Do you value financial freedom? Being of service? The ability to come and go as you please? Learning to create a flexible schedule which works for you and your family?.
To find your passions, get in touch with your feelings and values. Then your core needs and desires will come to light.
Don’t get burned out going after a kind of success that doesn’t match your values. If you do this you will miss out on happiness and fulfillment.
Life Purpose – Without This Success You are Going Nowhere
Write your private thoughts, dreams, desires and wishes for your life purpose down on paper.
If you want to find your life purpose, you need to:
• Get out of your head and into your heart. Sometimes we all suffer from what is known as analysis/paralysis. We think too much and we don’t drop down into our own hearts.
• Take time to be quiet and sit still. Whether you go to the beach or the boardwalk or the park, you need to schedule time in to be quiet. As odd as it may sound, scheduling time to be quiet will actually help you to get into the process of being quiet anywhere, anytime randomly.
• When you sit still and get quiet, you can actually hear a little better than you normally do when there is so much noise in your head.
• Take notes. Take time to journal your thoughts and feelings on paper. When you journal, you don’t have to worry about filters. You don’t have to worry about what people will say, respond or how they think.
• Write your private thoughts, dreams, desires and wishes for your life purpose down on paper.
• Get clear. Once you take on the practice of getting quiet and being still, you now have the opportunity to get clear. To clear your mind of the clutter. To make clear goals. Taking notes is a great way to get clear. Make a declaration.
• Once you are clear, start declaring your life purpose. Make positive and happy statements about how excited you are about pursuing your life purpose.
Once you’ve done the work to uncover your own definition of success and why you want it, it’s time to take a trip outside of your head and beyond your comfort zone into the world of action.
While it’s nice to get inside your head and get in touch with your passions and values, it’s even more important to get in touch with the ‘how’. How will you make it happen?
Let’s take a look at several categories of life and how to succeed in each one.
The 5 Life Categories
How to Succeed in Each Category
1. Spirituality
God success is basic. If you don’t know where you came from, you may have difficulty knowing where you are going. Success in spirituality comes from one very important tool – practice. For me it means finding peace by meditating on my faith. Faith needs constant tending: learning, praying, and nurturing a relationship with God. What does spirituality success mean to you?
2. Personal Goals
We all have so much going on in life. There’s work, career, school, home and family. The list goes on and on. It’s so easy to lose sight of what our personal goals are. We might want to finish a degree, complete a certificate, write a book or just learn a hobby or skill.
We say we don’t have time, but the truth is we don’t make time. Have you ever noticed if there’s something you truly wanted to do, you find the time to do it?
Bouncing from this, here are a few tips on how to create personal success goals and how to achieve them. These tips are basic and can also apply to other categories of success.
• Research your personal goals. If you want to learn a new sport or skill, for example, start by simply exploring what’s involved a little bit at a time. Don’t take out 15 books from the library, talk to 20 different people about it and research for hours on end on the internet. Spend 30 minutes one day and 15 minutes another researching your new personal goal and stop there.
• You can have several goals and work on them at the same time, but be careful to take baby steps with each goal. You see you might become overzealous and start out wanting to diet and exercise, clean out clutter, take a class, earn a certificate, etc. and then you may spiral out of control and get frustrated.
• Slowly begin to incorporate these new goals into your life through small, actionable and measurable steps.
• As you go along you will see what pace is right for you, and how many goals and steps you can work on simultaneously. If you find yourself getting frustrated then scale back and go more slowly.
How to Achieve Your Goals
• Once you’ve determined your goals it is vital that you get out of your head and into your heart and then into action. Without small, measurable action steps, your success remains nothing but a story.
• Be careful when talking about your personal success goals. Other people don’t want to leave their comfort zone and they may want you to stay there with them as well, putting a wet blanket over your enthusiasm.
• Pick just one person you trust to talk to about your personal plans and your fears, excitement and concerns.
• Pick an action step for the week and stick to it. Ask that person you trust to be an accountability partner you will have to report to.
• Reward yourself as you go along and reach milestones.
• Acknowledge the success you are feeling on a small scale as time goes on. Don’t rush and don’t get ahead of yourself.
• Notice you are gaining momentum on your goal. It’s not bigger than you. It’s actually happening in smaller increments.
• Begin to get excited, and it will show. Power tip – the more you get excited about what you are doing, the more inspired you will feel and the more momentum you will create.
Take small steps and bite-size pieces – it is important not to get over zealous with your goals and do not take on too many at the same time.
• Have an accountability partner. There’s nothing like a good friend as your accountability partner. He or she tells you the truth even when you don’t want to hear it. Having an accountability partner is one of the best ways to keep yourself in line and in check. There’s no greater or worse feeling than having to tell somebody you did, or did not do, something you were supposed to.
Hold yourself accountable – check in with yourself every once in a while. Make certain you ask yourself the hard questions and tell yourself the truth about why you didn’t do something. Then take the necessary action step to correct it. Keep practicing.
• Learn how to be self disciplined. Understand that it takes practice and don’t beat yourself up. Just keep practicing. The more you practice the art of self-discipline, the more easily it will come to you.
• Talk positively to yourself. In order to achieve success in all areas of your life, it’s important to watch the self talk and not be negative. Picture it this way – would you talk to your best friend the way you critically talk to yourself sometimes? Often the answer is “no”.
• Be kind to yourself in your words. The better you talk to yourself, the better you’ll feel and the more prosperity you will experience in all areas of your life.
Learn much more about how to choose and achieve goals in my three-part series.
Goals and Dreams: Discover the Life-Changing Benefits
How to Set Goals in 5 Steps: Explore Your Hidden Dreams
Meeting Goals: A Powerful 5-Step Strategy
3. Relationships – An Essential Life Category
In order to have big success in relationships, you need to focus on each particular relationship. So many times, or actually all times, we come into relationships and bring into them every single relationship we’ve ever had in the past from our parents to our siblings.
If you want success in relationships, you have to think clearly. This is a big subject and cannot be covered satisfactorily here. But some of the following ideas may help you.
• Relationships are not just love interests. Relationships are people we work with and people who are family members and friends.
• Problems with people often make us angry. What if you were to just express your anger without blaming someone else?
Do you see how this could equate to a successful solution?
For example, in business, when a boss or CEO blames their employee, their employee becomes defensive and less cooperative. It just makes sense.
However, when a CEO guides and leads by example and makes reasonable requests for change and prosperity, people will follow suit. This works in personal relationships as well as career and other relationships.
• A successful relationship means being honest with who you are and also how you show up. It’s so easy to play the blame game in relationships without looking to take some responsibility of our own. It’s important to take a look at our actions, our thoughts, and our pre-conceived notions when we are relating to others.
• In relationships there are things that bring success and things that bring failure. Here are just a few:
Things that bring success: Respect. Gratitude. Honesty. Praise.
Things that bring failure: Blame. Contempt. Criticism. Dishonesty.
4 Career
Career goals may be a little easier to achieve than personal goals. When it comes to personal goals, you get up inside your head and you study your own feelings and values. It’s easier to set career goals and detach from them in a cooler more logical way of thinking.
• Examine and explore which area of your career is not working.
• Ask yourself what your end goal is – do you want to retire earlier, work fewer hours, or have more power? Determine your end goal.
• For example, you may want to show up earlier or on time for three weeks or you may want to speak up at meetings whereas you never did so before.
You may want to earn a certificate which will put you in line for more money or a promotion. You may want to take on more responsibility at work to show your new boss what you are capable of.
• Once you know your end goal, start creating a plan of action.
• Pick five action steps, beginning with the smallest.
• Record them on paper.
• Take one small action step per day for a set amount of time – let’s use an example of three weeks. Take one small action step per day for three weeks to get closer to the second action step.
• Continue using this model until all five action steps are completed and you have arrived at your career goal.
5 Prosperity & Money – It Starts with Your Attitude, not Your Earning Power
Have you ever looked at somebody and wondered to yourself how they did it? Lots of people feel the same way about others who are successful. We tend to look at others and think they are lucky or they get all the breaks or their husband/wife/parent made it happen or they come from money.
Prosperity is a mindset
Once you understand prosperity is a mindset, you are on the right track. Prosperity is not something that happens to you. It is something you make happen, and it is essential to have a positive mindset about prosperity. Tell yourself that you are prosperous and will continue to be.
Choose an area in your life where you want more prosperity. Is it in your career, your financial status, credit card debt or savings and retirement? Prosperity is basically about money and how you grow it.
Money has so much power to control us if we let it. Here are a few action steps to take around having success in the area of finances:
• What’s your story? We all have stories around money. It’s your job to uncover your story. Do you believe you’re not good enough to to be prosperous, or do you believe only greedy people have and receive money? Do you tell yourself a story that only people who are better, smarter or more worthy will have money? Define your story.
• What are your money habits? Are you a spender or a hoarder? Are you generous or a little greedy? Do you manage your money or are you careless?
• Once you uncover your negative money story and any poor self-sabotaging habits surrounding money, you can now write your own brand new story. Write that story in detail and then live it.
• Start practicing positive affirmations around money, like these:
- I can have more money flow easily into my life and for positive reasons.
- I can create abundance.
- I already am in flow and creating abundance.
- I feel so excited about the abundance of money coming my way.
- Financial prosperity is possible in my life.
• Practice these affirmations daily, several times a day; visualize on them and meditate on them if you truly want financial abundance. It’s not only a “work harder/make more” scenario. It’s also about positive thinking.
The Tools for Success
“Now you know how to begin to work on success in the 5 life categories. The tricky part is to keep up the momentum.”
Following are the tools you will need to reach personal success.
Momentum – A Daily Practice
Now you know how to begin to work on success in the 5 life categories. The tricky part is to keep up the momentum
• The biggest mistake, when it comes to momentum, is that people start too big and fall short. Allow enthusiasm and passion to fuel your momentum. Nothing fuels momentum more than excitement.
• Incorporate momentum into your daily life. Plan something every day toward your goal that makes you feel excited. When you are excited, you create your own momentum.
• Believe in yourself – above and beyond all things, belief in yourself is key.
• Ignore the critical opinions of others. If there are naysayers and negative people in your life, tune them out. Just keep moving forward.
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts.”
– Winston Churchill
Failure – Your New Best Friend
• Fear of failure is actually more damaging than failure itself – once you experience a failure, you will see it’s not the bogeyman you once though it was.
• Failure just helps you see that you took a wrong turn. You will get back on the right path.
• Understand the definition of failure; Failure is this: not taking action, not taking chances and not taking risks.
The Reward System
How to create a reward system that works for you:
• Keep a journal – every time you have a success write it down.
• Keep a journal – every time you have a failure look at your journal and see exactly what you are made of and where you can change a habit.
• Whenever you reach a small goal, boast about it. Tell others about it – don’t allow them to put you down or minimize your success.
• Treat yourself every time you achieve a goal – it doesn’t have to be big, but something that will make a connection in your brain that achieving goals reaps rewards.
Training for Your Brain
• Choose which emotion you want to associate success with – is it fear of failure or is it joy, happiness and fulfillment?
• Pay attention to your thoughts – you can change your thoughts at any time. Change your thoughts to more positive ones.
• Train your brain to have positive associations with things like money or work.
Success Visualization
• Pick an uplifting vibe and stick with it – get enthusiastic about how excited you are your dream will come true.
• Before you do this, however, you must know your goal, and name it – be enthusiastic about your specific goal.
• Sometimes it helps to think about the completed goal and not how you will get there.
• Visualize your success daily. Banish negative thoughts. Face your fears in small doses then let them go as you realize you survived each and every thing you were afraid of.
Meditation
Meditation can help you feel an overall calmness which will lead to positivity. Some people meditate to empty their minds, but better yet you can sit quietly and fill your mind with positive things like Bible passages and things you are thankful for.
• Stop holding your breath – check in with your breath throughout the day, notice how tight your stomach is – let your stomach relax.
• The center of the body is the stomach – it’s your gut and your gut doesn’t let you down – how are you taking care of your gut? Are you eating right, hydrating, relaxing, working hard and then taking a break? Take a break to meditate.
• Keep practicing and meditation will become second nature.
Success Habits
• Take a look at your habits and what hasn’t worked so you can figure out a new strategy for what does.
• Take small steps. Practice one new habit at a time until that one is in place
• Write it all down and the steps you will take to achieve each new habit.
Write your strategy down and carry it with you – use an app if necessary. Technology works wonders toward achieving habit goals.
Some Habits to Consider:
• Make it a habit to be decisive. If your decision doesn’t work out, simply make a new one – don’t beat yourself up.
• Always be in action and in momentum. Don’t sit analyzing for too long. Keep moving.
• Delegate as often as you can.
• Learn how and when to say no.
• Kick procrastination to the curb. Reward yourself for every goal achieved no matter how small, especially for the small ones.
• Celebrate success both personally and with others.
• Write down small and large successes, put it away and revisit it – you’d be surprised at how much you achieved.
Keep It Up!
“Success is a journey, a journey with milestones. Once you reach a milestone, don’t stop! Keep advancing to the next one.”
Success is a journey, a journey with milestones. Once you reach a milestone, don’t stop! Keep advancing to the next one.
So keep working on your success story. You most certainly can retrain your brain for success. It just takes practice.
The more you practice, the easier it will become. With these tips, practices, and goal-setting techniques, you’ll be on your way to your own amazing brand of success!
BOOKSHELF
Here are the books I recommend to help you with finding your success!
The Success Principles by Jack Canfield
The Secret Code of Success by Noah St. John
Happy Mind Happy Life by Rangan Chatterjee
