I am thinking abut the meaning of “Success” today perhaps because I am turning 52 in March and pondering how I want to spend my energy in the next final third of my life. “Being Successful” I will not lie has mattered to me too much at times. I have spun my own wheels in the muddy morass of my misconceptions of what “Success” meant to me earlier on in my life. Today I am grasping it differently and share my latest level of understanding here as my offering to help you better understand what “Being in Success” is for YOU!
Success is a very personal experience and its definition is relative to our own unique understanding and measure of what being successful is to who we are as individuals. Knowing therefore what success means (for you) and how (only you) can measure it, is essential to our ultimately being able to acknowledge and feel good about our accomplishments regardless of how small or big they are and just how long they take.
A part of our human condition (or conditioning) is that we all stop ourselves from appreciating and being in that good vibe that comes from noticing even the most minute of our daily actions. You know those times when we can actually notice we feel happy, excited, proud, relieved because we know we have; lost that weight, made it to the gym, wrote that blog, returned those calls, or on a bigger scale; published that book or gave birth to our first child!
Now because Success is relative to who we are, when we don’t use our own customized scale to gauge our efforts we will always end up comparing ourselves to others who have what we want or are doing what we want to be doing. More often than not when this happens we will dismiss any progress we have made to reach our goals ruling out any possibility of having had some success. Worse case scenario we think we are less than and tell ourselves:
“I am so UNSUCCESSFUL!”
It’s really important to not allow ourselves to go too deeply into our despair when this thought is vibrating in our head. The reason being that too much despair can cause you to give up on trying to manifest having successes in those places you feel most challenged. And the other even more important reason I have come to learn in my own life experience is that it’s in the places where we feel most challenged to succeed that our greatest possibility for new growth and deep learning reside. So in short; buck up and stick with it because honestly you don’t know what you don’t know and, unless you try, you will never know the sweetness of your own Success!
Realize too there are actual benefits to witnessing the accomplishments of others when we don’t fall down the rabbit hole of our own, “I am not successful like them” despair. For example, seeing others succeed can serve to inspires and give us the very motivation and direction we may need.
Finally, beware of when you feel the wind come out of your sail after seeing others doing or having the success you want. Revitalize yourself with a simple reminder that others’ successes are a gift from the universe to help you to stay the course of your own Success experience. Comparing yourself to others is a typical easy go-to measure to dismiss your efforts and sabotage yourself from having a unique experience of success. It is the ultimate stopper keeping you from receiving what the universe has in store for you!
I dare you now to be Successful on terms that honor who you are as an individual. Do this not by comparing yourself to others accomplishments but through using their efforts to inspire you to succeed in all the places you want to shine.
Please share here what “Being in Success” means to you and what you have learned from it?
© Susanna Kearney & Creating Space for Women, Inc, 2014. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Susanna Kearney & Creating Space for Women with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Susanna Kearney is a clinical psychotherapist, life coach, and ordained Interfaith Minister with decades of experience helping women to find self-fulfillment. She coaches women both professionally and personally through her company, Creating Space For Women. She's currently working on her first to-be-published book and living in Park Slope, Brooklyn with her husband and two teenaged sons.