Today’s quote made me think about what success means to me:
“Define success on your own terms, achieve it by your own rules, and build a life you’re proud to live.” – Anne Sweeney
And it brought me back to my history, where success just meant like finding a job (and I was supposed to have a good job as I’m quite intelligent) and just work and live a happy life, live the life I knew as a child and that was pretty OK with me. How different did my life go, but maybe that’s just how life goes.
So this quote of today made me think of how I would define success today. And I think I wouldn’t define it much different than when I was a child, when I grew up. And today I read this page about what ‘successful people’ do: 10 high performance habits that lead to success. And I know somehow those things are true, but it’s not the whole truth. Because I did win the morning, somewhere in my life. And I did do the hard things. And yes, maybe I didn’t embrace feedback. But I think I did learn from failures, although looking back maybe not enough. And yes, maybe I’m not good at choosing the right attitude. But I did do a lot, an awful lot of one more. And it didn’t work out mostly, so I’m very careful doing one more at the moment, or doing anything. And I think I have a purpose, although the desire might not be big enough or clear enough. And maybe I’m not recommitting every day. And yes, patience has not been my strongest side. But in the end I think I do not fear anyone.
So looking back at this I think I have not done that bad in those success habits. So I should have success. But I don’t. And looking at all kinds of other lists with similar ‘success things’ I think I’ve not done bad on those also. So what’s going on? What’s the secret? Why don’t I have what I think I should have, I’m supposed to have? Something is still missing, and there wouldn’t be so many websites and self help books and training and courses and what else if I were the only one. And it seems also that mostly ‘those who are already there’ benefit mostly of it. And good samples for me in the ‘self help industry’ are people like Esther and Jerry Hicks, Anthony Robbins, Bob Proctor, maybe Joel Osteen and there are many more. It seems they’re doing pretty OK and I guess they do. Or are they mainly keeping up an image? Or is it their personality? Do they have certain treats I don’t have, you don’t have? And the hard part is that it would be hard to ‘counter’ them. As they have made it and I have not. And somehow they have the power and I have not.
And some other successes I also don’t fully understand, where people seem to have achieved success at very young age, like Leonardo DiCaprio and Justin Bieber, although (young) people who succeed (early) in life seem to have one thing in common: having the right support from someone else, which I feel never had. But again, this is basically the reason why Inspiration for Success exists as I want to find a way to give everything that external support he or she needs.
And that’s what has been bothering me for a long time, that it’s easy to say what you should do or shouldn’t do or how to do it when you’re already ‘there’. But if you’re not there, you keep wondering what you’re doing wrong, at least I do. So yes, somehow I still intend to be ‘there’, probably through this website, this project. But as of now I’m not and I’m suffering quite a lot of ‘not being there’. And yes, somehow this is still the answer, that if I keep doing this, keep writing, keep pushing Inspiration for Success, no matter what, I’ll be ‘there’ one day.
But I’m not there yet, and that’s not always easy.