Defining Success
- Karen McGinnis
- Aug 30, 2021
- 3 min read
Defining Success
How do you define success? Is it personal and unique to you? Is it cultural and defined by others?
Everyone has a different definition of success. Generally, we consider someone who has a happy, healthy life and a sense of well being to have achieved success. We feel successful when we are doing meaningful work and enjoying our career.
We may seek financial independence as a sign of success. Everyone might define financial independence in different ways or may not consider it to even be much of a factor in happiness or success. Being able to “give back“ is not necessarily defined by finances in every situation.
We might seek to have an impact on people around us. It might be family, community or on a large scale, the world.
We might seek to attain wisdom and continue to experience wonder in new experiences. Success is and should be different for each person.
Names we recognize in the world and throughout history give us clues to the keys to success.
We are encouraged to know ourselves and what we want. Considering your personality and seek to set goals that fit with what you want.
Stephen Covey “If you carefully consider what you want to be said about you in the funeral experience, you will find your definition of success.”
Identify what you want and plan to achieve it. Know what, how and when.
In order to know “what and when”, there needs to be some sort of timeline, “when”.
What if there is not enough time in a life to accomplish your goals? There may just be too much to know to actually be able to learn everything. Not enough time, or money? Apply an alternate strategy!
Look around (research) your desired goal and see if you can find someone who has already arrived there—or close to it. Now learn from them. Borrow. Learn about them. What did they do? What and where did they learn what they needed to know? What mistakes did they make?
As the saying goes “No point reinventing the wheel.” Borrowing and learning from someone else’s experience and investment of time and money can be a good thing. This can shorten and ease your learning curve and put your goal in reach.
Another key to achieving your goal is using relentless forward motion to your benefit.
Deepok Chopra “Success in life could be defined as the continual expansion of happiness and the progressive realization of worthy goals.”
To achieve forward motion, learn to recognize roadblocks and adversity. As you research those who have achieved success, notice the set backs they encountered and the strategies they employed to deal with them.
Use this information to your advantage. When making a plan and mapping out your forward motion, anticipate challenges. Forewarned is forearmed. Be prepared, not surprised. As you achieve small goals along the way, meet and overcome challenges, your ultimate success will be ever closer. You will learn to be successful as you continuously experience success. The more you practice this step the greater your forward motion toward your own success gets. And the easier the process becomes.
To make relentless forward motion be sustainable, commitment to the process must exist.
Winston Churchill “Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.”
Wise and successful people have observed that failure only really occurs when you stop trying. Celebrate each small goal that exists on your plan. They jump you from point to point on the road to your goal. Mountains are high and imposing but climbing them consists of one small struggling step after another, often with a view!
Putting these guides in simple terms looks like this:
1) Know what you want and set goals.
2) Make a plan to achieve your goal that has a timeline and is progressive
3) Experience relentless forward motion that moves you toward your goal
4) Be committed
As you find yourself moving through your life of purpose, the experiences and wisdom of others will encourage and sustain you. In the process, you will find that sharing what you have learned and giving back to others along the way makes the experience richer and more meaningful. As in anything, the journey becomes the destination.
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Comments? Personal experiences with the steps to success? Love to hear about it. Karenmac1999@hotmail.com
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This article and others are jumping off points for personal thinking and consideration. For more articles to generate exploration, go to the blog at
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Other resources on this subject:
and books available by Deepok Chopra, Winston Churchill, Stephen Covey, Richard Branson, Arianna Huffington, John Wooden, Tony Hsieh, Maya Angelou and many others.
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