What Does Success Look Like to You?

I would say that everyone want to be successful in all phases of their life.  But why is that most people don’t feel they have success or judge their success according to others?  This comparison to others can deflate a person’s sense of reality, which can lead to a host of emotions and prevent them from having this desired success.  Someone will always be smarter, taller, prettier, or achieve more than ourselves but I think we have to gauge success by our own standards and not by others.

I see people all the time who have achieved a level of success in either their personal life or their work life, but somehow they don’t see this.  A person may be doing well in their career but have problems in their personal life, and vice-versa, but feel they are failing. They take one area that may be lacking and lump it into every area, thus leading them to feel they are not good enough or have failed.  I think in order to be successful you need to know what success looks like to you.

If you don’t know when you reach success then how do you know you haven’t?  It is important that you have some type of measurement in order to gauge when you reached your goals or have succeeded at the things you want.  If not, then you will always feel in lack.

Here are some questions you might want to answer to get you started:

• What do you really, really want?
• Why do you want it?
• What does this look like?
• What does success look like to you? Can you name the attributes or a person with those attributes?
• How will you know when you have reached it or found success?
• Do you believe you can get this?
• Do you believe you deserve to have this?

Knowing what success looks like will lead you to go after it and know when you’ve reached it.  This knowing helps you to become more aware of what it takes to get the things you want; you will then create the ways to achieve them which will increase your feelings of being a success.