What does success mean to you?

What does success mean to you?

A friend of mine, who is successful by her own standards, shared this with me. She said:

“Kay, I am not attending anymore bridal or baby showers, unless it is yours.“

Her frustration came on the heels of her being 30 something, not married, and having no children as yet. She was tired of being asked the same questions over and over again – when is she getting married or when is she going to have children.

These persons were using their definition of success to judge whether or not my friend was successful. Let me hasten to add, she has no problems with getting married or with having children. She made the conscious decision that whether or not her biological clock is ticking, these are life long commitments that are not to be entered into lightly. She also believes that a spouse is an addition, not a completion.

Success means different things

I too have come to the realization that success means different things to different people, as it should. Whether or not we feel successful is dependent on our own definition of the word. How we define success, reveals to us exactly what it is that we are looking for in life.

Ways we measure success

Our definitions tend to fall under one or more of the following categories.

1. We measure success by our faith. That is, we feel successful if we have a close relationship with our Creator.
2. We measure success by our material possessions. For instance, how much money we have in the bank, the size of our house, how many pairs of shoes we own or the kind of car we drive.
3. We measure success by how much power and control we believe that we have. For example, a manager feels successful because (s)he believes that (s)he has absolute power and control over the staff (s)he manages.
4. We measure success by the contribution that we make. We feel we are successful if we are helping people to make a difference in their lives.

How to define success

First, we must get crystal clear on what it is that we want for our lives. This may be one of the most difficult questions that we will ever have to answer. Some of us have no idea what it is that we want. There are also times when we think we know want we want, but then when we achieve it, we realize that it is not all that we thought it would have been.

Hint

To help you to decide what are some of the things you want in your life, start taking notice of situations in which you feel jealous of someone for what they have.

Pay attention to times when you secretly say to yourself “I wish I had that.” or “I wish that were me."

Jealousy is a normal human reaction. The important thing is to not act negatively on it.

Figuring out what success means to you

We will save ourselves a lot of heartache and pain the sooner we figure out what success means to us. We should never try to impose our definition on someone else (as difficult as that may be). As Maya Angelou says,

“Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”

How to achieve success

To achieve success in any area of your life takes hard work, determination, consistency, and a renewal of our minds. If we are waiting to be ready, we must stop waiting now because we will never be ready. We must “Just Do It.”

Above, we defined success and now we will be talking about how to achieve our own success. Remember it is up to us how we define success.

What is learnt behaviour?

Bishop T.D. Jakes once told the story of a pregnant dog.

There was a pregnant dog with perfect legs and one day, her back leg got broken because she was hit by a car. The broken leg never healed properly and as a result, she walked with a limp. Her pups were born and after a while, the pups (who all had perfect legs) started to walk with a limp.

He used this story to illustrate the point “we redo what has been modeled in front of us”. The pups saw their mother walking with a limp and modeled that behaviour. For example, reactions such as fear fall into this category of learnt behaviour.

Unlearning the learnt behaviour

For us to achieve success, we must ‘unlearn’ some of this learnt behaviour by transforming our minds. That is, we must change how we see a situation.

We must start to recognize any limiting beliefs that we may have. For instance, at times we find ourselves saying “I can’t afford it.” Now, I am not suggesting that we start lying to ourselves by saying how rich we are if we are not. I am suggesting that instead, we ask “How can I afford it?” This simple shift in perspective sets off a trigger in our minds that motivates us to want to figure a way out.

Steps to achieving success through transformational thinking

Step 1

Anchor our spirits. We must have something that does not change when all hell is breaking loose. For some, that is our faith. We are not defined by what is going on around or inside us.

Step 2

Surround ourselves with people who we want to be like and get an accountability partner. This is someone who can encourage us to keep our commitments.

Step 3

Stop telling our stories from a place of pain. We have all been through difficulties in our lives. These experiences – the good, the bad, and the in-between – have helped to shape us into who we are today. Everything happens for a reason (yes, even the senseless things). Let us start telling our stories from a place of victory instead of from a place of pain.

Step 4

Stop looking backward and thinking from a point of what happened to you. We can not change what happened, but we can change what is going to happen. We must step out of our history and into our destiny.

Step 5

Start thinking from a point of who we are. Who am I? This is probably one of the most difficult questions that we will ever ask ourselves. It is time for us to get down to the core of our beings. It is at our core, that we are our very best selves. We are tired and exhausted because we have been pretending to be something and someone that we are not. To get to our cores, we will need to study ourselves and ask questions such as:

• What motivates me? What makes me get up out of bed in the mornings?
• What do I add to the room?
• What do I spend the least amount of my time doing? Research has shown that we spend 80% of energy doing things that we are ok at and 20% doing things that we are really good at.
• What am I missing?

It is time for us to get to our core by answering the question:

“Who am I?”