How To Rig Your Success Meter To Always Be Successful
(And Never Fail Again)
How do you measure success?
That is going to be the first indicator of knowing what it is going to take in order for you to be successful. There isn’t a right or wrong answer, but in order to get to your goal, your goal needs to be well defined.
Since we all value different things, nobody can define how successful you are in your own life except for you. So, what do you want to measure your success by?
How much free time you have?
How much money you make?
How educated you are?
How big your house is?
The kind of car you drive?
How many friends you have?
How many vacations you take?
Your job title?
How many goals you have reached?
How healthy you are?
How talented you are?
How much you volunteer?
How well respected you are?
How much positive impact you have in this world?
What jumps out at you on this list? Maybe you measure your success by several things on this list or maybe it’s something that I haven’t listed.
What if I told you that none of these things matter when it comes to your success?
The truth is, that isn’t for me to decide. It’s your life and you get to choose what works for you, but what is the purpose of being successful to you? For me, the purpose of success is to align me with happiness. If you stop and ask yourself, does your idea of success bring you happiness or is the quest for success taking you away from happiness?
It’s easy to get laser focused on your goals and to forget about why you set them in the first place. If your goal is to always to find a way to be happy with what you have, then you can never fail. You’re allowed to want the promotion, the bigger house, more time with your family, extra vacations, more friends, or whatever it is that you want, but it’s important to remember that there are more ways than one to get to where you want to go. If you’re not careful, it can become easy to get caught up in the trap of always wanting more, doing more, and feeling like you need to be more.
What Makes You Successful In This Moment?
Success isn’t about measuring how far you have to go, success is about measuring how far you’ve come. Success is about measuring what you have instead of what you don’t. Success comes from the ability to be flexible when roadblocks pop up. Life is full of roadblocks and challenges, ups and downs, ebbs and flows, successes and failures, happiness and sadness and once you realize that, it’s easier to realize that success can always feel fleeting unless you change the way you view it.
If you can find the lessons in what feels like a failure, that is a success.
If you can keep going when you feel like giving up, that is a success.
If you are enjoying your life, that is a success.
If you have people to love in your life, that is a success.
If you have people that love you, that is a success.
If you have food on the table, that is a success.
If you can ask for help when you need it, that is a success.
If you’re struggling and you make it through another day, that is a success.
If you can accept that setbacks happen, that is a success.
If you can be willing to make the best out of a bad situation, that is a success.
If you can look for the silver lining, that is a success.
If you can find peace no matter what is happening, that is a success.
If you can always find something to be thankful for, that is a success.
Sometimes relationships come to an end before you’re ready, you may not get into the school you want, get called back for a second interview, get the house you put the bid in on, have as much time as you want, be where you thought you would be by a certain age, make as much money as you expected to, etc…but sometimes in those moments when you feel like things aren’t turning out how you want, they end up turning out better than you could have ever planned and sometimes life is just challenging.
Life is also always changing so wherever you’re at today could be completely different from where you’re at tomorrow. Big goals take time and most people underestimate how long it will take to reach them. There is no rule about where you are supposed to be by a certain point in time and if you’re putting that pressure on yourself, it makes it really hard to feel successful or even happy. Stop comparing yourself to others, remove those expectations, and allow yourself to be proud of wherever you are at right now. If you’re not in a good place in this moment, check out “The Low Risk Way To Change Your Life” or join my small weekly challenges designed to create big changes.
Success isn’t about things going perfectly or being perfect, it is about progress, finding what feels good to you, and celebrating every single little win. It’s about taking setbacks on as challenges, finding out how strong you are, enjoying the journey, and learning to be patient with yourself when you feel like you’re failing. If you change the way you measure success it is impossible to fail, all you have to do is just simply keep on going.