What does success look like to you?
Thursday, August 7 2014
Nwsday
ACCORDING to the Oxford dictionary, you are successful when you achieve something desired, planned or attempted – the accomplishment of an aim or purpose. You are also successful, according to Oxford, if you’ve attained fame, wealth or social status.
The second definition of success is the one most real to many of us because it’s what we can see. On television we can watch the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Handbags with identifiable symbols and initials tell us exactly how much money was spent. The amount of money you have is a definite measure of success. Dreams of luxury cars, lavish homes on every continent including an equally expansive home on the island, designer clothes and safes full of expensive jewelry fill our minds as we long to win the Lotto in order to be successful.
These long term, day dreamy thoughts of success are frustrating. It gives rise to thoughts about the haves and have-nots; about our own inability and incapability to achieve like others are achieving. It’s almost as if some are destined to be successful but we are not.
Perhaps it’s time to revise the success definition. But first let me share a powerful allegory by Tolstoy, that I came across in Og Mandino’s A Better Way to Live, showing how man has always failed at fulfilling goals that have little to do with his happiness and the enjoyment of the brief time here on earth.
A peasant named Pakhom is certain that he will be a great success when he finally has as much land as is contained in the vast estates possessed by the most elite Russian noblemen. That is his goal. The day arrives when he receives an amazing offer: he will be awarded at no cost, as much land as he himself can encircle by running from sunrise to sunset. Pakhom sells all his worldly goods in order to move to the far-distant place where this generous offer has been made. After many hardships, he arrives, and arranges to capitalise on his great opportunity the next day.
At dawn, Pakhom begins to run at breakneck speed. Dashing into the bright morning sun, his goal fixed before his eyes, he races along in the blistering heat, looking neither to the left or right. All day, he continues his swift pace, stopping neither for food nor water nor rest, his estate growing larger with each stride. Finally, as the sun disappears beyond the desert and darkness envelopes the land, Pakhom staggers to the finish line. Victory! His goal has been achieved. Success!
And then…with his final step, Pakhom drops dead from exhaustion. All the land he now needs…is six feet of earth.
I like Victoria Moran’s definition of success: “Success is not down the road. It can be precisely where you are on the road, right now, today.” The idea here is to start living fully. Be a success in your own eyes. Look at yourself only and see how you’re succeeding from one day to the next. Stop trying so hard to control things and people and your own circumstances. Stop trying so hard to be more. Be yourself. Who you are and what you’re doing today is enough for today.
Dr Warren Lee shares, “Every week in my office or in the Emergency Room, I meet people who have just slammed into a reality they never saw coming: it’s malignant, you’ve got six months left, I’m sorry but we couldn’t save her...Inevitably, one of the first things those folks feel is the heavy crush of things they’ve left undone, words that should have been said, relationships broken and never repaired, ways in which they meant to change, trips they never took...They were waiting for a more convenient time, a better opportunity, for tomorrow.”
Yesterday is gone and tomorrow is largely out of our control. If you want to change your life, you can’t do it tomorrow. And you can’t undo what happened yesterday or any time in the past. But you can make today different. You can’t lose weight tomorrow, improve your business cash flow tomorrow, or save the relationship with your kids sometime down the road. All you have is today. This moment – right now so ask yourself “what needs to be done?” then do it.
Don’t focus on the number on the scale, or the amount of money you need to accumulate or how family X just took their kids to Disneyworld and you can’t.
Instead measure your own success by how you’re paying attention to your inner life, how you’re treating yourself and others and that just for today, you’ve eaten reasonably. Give a nod to the little things that you managed to do today. If you got some exercise – great! If you started the project – super!
Listen to the wise old Roman Seneca, “True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient for he that is so wants nothing. The great blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it be, without wishing for what he has not.”
Never allow your day to become so cluttered that you neglect your most important goal: to do the best that you can, to enjoy the gift of each day that you get to be here on earth and to rest satisfied in that day for what you’ve been able to accomplish.
People want their life to count but they lack 2 things: Clarity about their calling or purpose and encouragement from someone to say, “You can do that.” I journey with people who have this need until what they are meant to do, becomes clear. –Discover the 3 mistakes we inadvertently make that prevent us from, achieving our true potential.
