What Success Isn't

[tconnor]

Success Tips #211
What Success Isn't

Over the years, I have read numerous books and heard hundreds of speakers who claim to all have the secrets of success or to put it more specifically:

• what success is
• what success can be
• how to find success
• how to maintain success
• how to enjoy your success
• how to feel successful when you aren't
• how to share your success
• and numerous similar concepts.

In this tip, I would like to focus on what success isn't not what it is and what gets in our way as we search after it.

Please keep in mind that success is defined differently by everyone. Each of us puts our own personal twist on what we feel represents success in our lives or careers. To one person success is money, to another it is good health. To many it is a pleasant lifestyle, and to others just getting through another day. During my life, I have been at the bottom of the barrel several times and I have been to the mountaintop and viewed the world from a vantage point that very few people ever do. I have known the sting of failure and the thrill of achievement. But no matter what my outer circumstances were the one concept that helped me maintain a sense of inner peace, life balance and calm was my personal definition of success. This definition became the watchword for my life during whatever was going on in my world whether positive or negative.

Success to me isn't:

• having more money than you can ever spend.
• career accolades or fame.
• a position of influence or power.
• a promotion to a position in a career or organization that you hate
• the freedom to do nothing.
• more education than you will ever use. (I am not referring her to personal growth.)
• a new car every year.
• a bigger house because you can afford it.
• more club memberships than I have time for.

None of us has the right to judge others by our standards or definition of success. During the past 35 years, I have been in front of over a quarter million people in twenty countries as a professional speaker, and I can tell you that in each of those audiences there were people who were more and less successful than I am. Ah ha….according to what or whose standards? You see, as soon as I make the previous statement, I am assuming that your definition of success is the same as mine. Success to me means: living the way you want to live your life without infringing on the rights of others and the ability to support that lifestyle based on your own talent, time, energy and ability. It doesn't mean that if you inherit a million bucks and live the life of leisure - you are successful. (Just lucky - maybe and maybe not!)

What is success to you these days? Has your definition changed at all during the past few months? Years? After you hit forty? Sixty?

Getting in touch with what success isn't for you is one of the best ways to help you define what success is for you. Try it?