Many people go through life feeling they are not successful. But what is “success”? The fact we are born at all is a crazy miracle – think about how wondrously complex is this thing we called “life.” We still don’t understand how it works, really. We call ourselves the stewards of this planet, but it is truly this planet which is the steward of humanity. We are all so dependent on everything the Earth, Sun and Moon provides us each day.
“Success” then becomes a label, it’s meaning can be filled with our hopes, our fears, our biggest dreams or our littlest achievements. It is all up to us, each of us individually to define what we see as a success. This definition can change whenever we’d like it to, since we get to define it.
Ergo, when I feel down or defeated, I like to think of success in terms of anything I have accomplished recently. It could be something as “basic” (ahh labels, where would we be without them) as appreciating that our planet is still producing oxygen and appreciating each breath in that moment. Breathing IS an accomplishment worth pausing to appreciate, and there are hundreds if not thousands of other such things to appreciate.
Go for the small stuff when you feel down, go for the bigger stuff the minute you feel more bold and keep reaching for those dreams. Maybe it is about money, but even the money in this picture is a label, right? I chose money because it is what most people are programmed to believe defines success. Those who have lots of money know, it is not the only measure. Even our Founding Fathers knew, it wasn’t “life, liberty and the pursuit of money,” or “pursuit of world domination.” They knew. It is about “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
Happiness is probably a much better measure of success, and finding all the ways to appreciate the miracle of your life is as good a definition of “success” as any. For some, there are four “Ls” – Live, Love, Learn and Legacy. In truth, however, I think we can all focus on the experiences and happiness of the first three and leave the fourth to the anthropologists 100,000 years from now to sort out. Just saying.
