"Success" vs. Success!

“Success” vs. Success

What is success? Getting up in front of a room of professionals and posing the question leads to very common answers:
• An esteemed title
• A “C-level” position
• A significant salary
• Owning a luxury car
• Living in a extravagant home
• Holding a power position
• A spouse & 2.5 kids in a 5-bedroom house with a white picket fence and a dog that pees outside only on command…

But I digress…

The point is, most people answer that question with stereotypical responses based on societal expectations, and most people are not as fulfilled or happy as they could be.

I know it sounds crazy, but you can have both. I didn’t believe it myself for too many years. I believed, as many do that:

Success means hard work and hard work must be painful and frustrating, and require you to sacrifice much that you love (including self) and live with a few (or constant) migraines. But that’s the price of success, right?

It is amazing how adding two little words to the end of the first question triggers much pause, and more varied answers. What is success, FOR YOU?
And perhaps your list includes some of the answers on the first list, and that is great! As long as it is about what makes YOU happy, and not what you feel you must prove to the world, or what you think the world is expecting of you.

What I’ve learned is:
Success means hard work but that kind of hard work is fun when you do something you love. It will be rewarding and the world (at least the part that matters) will love you for it, and abundance will naturally follow. Not a bad price for success, right?

So think about it, what is “success” vs. what is success FOR YOU?

Keep Soaring!