Success

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.
- Herman Cain

I use to think that if my world would change, then I would change.
I use to think that if my world would change, if I could just have that Mercedes Benz, house on the Lake, Slim super model figure, perfectly seed straight long blond hair, and tanned bod then I would change and I would be happy.
In fact I suffered most of my teenage years with Anorexia and bulimia because I associated being slim with being successful. That is not the case at all and if you can relate to my line of past thinking we need to change this line of thinking quickly.

I did not realize that my world was not going to change for what I had; my world wasn’t going to change until I changed.
I didn’t realize that the problem was not on the outside, but it was on the inside. I spent a large part of my life chasing after something that was make believe. I was searching of success in the next lottery ticket, in the next pound I lost, in the next partner I had. It never dawned on me that those people that are truly and authentically successful are those people that are true to themselves and to others. They know themselves and hold and adequate self image. In short they are true to themselves, they are authentic.

Now if you are anything like what I use to be like you may be clouded with so much falseness and much of that you don’t know how it got there. But hopefully by working through this book you have cleared some/if not all of those grey clouds and the crystal clear blue skies are beginning to shine through. If you are in this place then success is going to follow, I will work with the fact that you know who you are now otherwise you wouldn’t have made it this far in the book. Since you know who you are, what you stand for and your personal vision, purpose and spirit you can now build upon this and plant the seeds for a successful authentic life.

The sun went down yesterday on all of us, on the poor people, the homeless, the rich and the mega wealthy. The sun arose today on the poor, the homeless, the rich and the mega rich this morning.
So what am I trying to say? I am saying that the problems that we have and are experiencing are not only excluded for us, the rich, the poor, the mega rich and the homeless all experience problems. It is not the problems that we have aren’t only for us, we all have them. It is not what problems we have it is how we effectively deal with them that will lead us to success.

We have been given a creative faculty within our mind and within this creative faculty we have been given, free and clear - imagination and with this imagination we can learn to use it to rise above an obstacle or failure to success. We can use the tools and the resources that we have internally to rise above and to lead us to the success we desire.
So what does success mean for you? I know that success for me means something different from what you classify as success. Dr Maxwell Maltz believes that there are some key characteristics of success. These apply to all I believe regardless of how you see success.
S – Sense of direction. When we have a sense of direction we know what we are shooting for. We have a clear direction in which to guide our mind and steer our thoughts to a useful and productive goal.
U – Understanding. When we understand ourselves and our lives truthfully it places us apart from the crowd. It places us on our own path, and isn’t that what living is all about? Being on our own path, learning about life how things work, understanding people and most importantly understanding ourselves as people, what makes us unique, our strengths, and our abilities, our talent and our minds.
C- Courage. Courage comes from faith. I believe faith and courage go hand in hand. You see when you are working toward a goal there are times when you must be courageous and dive deep into the depths of the water, into the unknown. When you go down under the water, you loose site of the shore, but you don’t panic, you have faith that you will find your way up to the surface and will safely swim to shore. That is why courage and faith are perpetual. Courage comes from conviction in what you are doing also. You must have an inner firm belief that what you are doing is right for you, if you don’t you may just find out when it comes time to be courageous that it is not a goal that is well believed.
Compassion – for you and for others is critical. Have you heard of that age old saying be hard on the task but soft on the person. Live by this motto and realize we judge others far to harshly for their actions and we are far to kind on ourselves because we judge ourselves for our motives. Realize that people do the best that they can at the time with the knowledge and information they have.
Esteem – You need a certain level of inner esteem to reach your goals. This esteem is what you will draw upon when you are discouraged or put down. Keep adding to your reserve bank of esteem.
Self acceptance – You must accept yourself for your uniqueness, your shortcomings and everything in between, give yourself a break from personal torture and past mistakes. You are not your mistakes, yes you may have made some past mistakes but you are not them and they are not you. You are a child of God, you must accept yourself for who you are right now as a person, and never accept any nasty comment from anyone.
Self confidence – Believe in yourself, believe you will do it, and you will do it. Our confidence usually comes with practice, and practice comes with repetition, and repetition comes with remembering our past successes that we have had. We carry out new endeavors when we know we have succeeded in the past because we can build on these. It doesn’t matter if you fail, pick yourself up, brush yourself of learn and move on.
Success is what we all aim for in our lives but sometimes it is too general and we need to be more specific.
In the space below mind map or brainstorm what success means for you?
Does it mean a loving kind caring and compatible partner who enjoys reading similar books, or does it mean giving your time and energy to a local charity once a month?
What ever it is, dare to dream, and dream big.