How You Should Really Be Measuring Success
Posted on January 01, 2018 by Angela Civitella, One of Thousands of Business Coaches on Noomii.
“Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value”
Albert Einstein
Are you successful? What defines success to you? Is it what people say about you, or what you think about yourself? What exactly is success? How can we define it? It seems as if everyone wants to be successful in life. We all are pursuing success. Still, most of us have absolutely no clue how we can accomplish success. Do we even understand what it truly means to be “successful?” Or are we simply repeating the definition of success that media and society have placed in our mind? For many, being successful in life is closely associated with having a lot of money. Others define success through the level of power and control they can exert over others. Which group do you fall into?
Success can be defined as a sense of accomplishment, and this can be extraordinarily empowering. Knowing that you are a success enriches your perception of life. Meaning, your life, and everyone who gets to play a role in it. Success is the great motivator, it fuels us with wanting to pursue our dreams, whatever they may be, big or small. There is only beauty where we are masters of our own canvas. So, you get to choose, no one else has that power, don’t fool yourselves into thinking that they do. Do not look at what the portrait of your life will look like tomorrow, focus on what it looks like today. Success is never claimed in the present, unfortunately.
We are too busy molding our success through the signature of what others deem to it to be, and evaluate ourselves accordingly, rather than drowning out the noise and assessing our own lives, and not through the checkered looking glass of others. Believe me when I tell you this.
What is the difference between being ordinary and extraordinary? Is it how successful you are? The answer lies within you, and to what extend you allow the outside world to define who you are and what you are. I’m sure this has happened to you (I know I am plagued with this at every turn): you walk into a board room, and before you utter a word, or have a seat, the people in that room have already made their mind up about you. What do you do? Do you spend the next 2 hours claiming your identity, or do you focus on why you are there and let prejudices and preconceived notions be damned? Take a guess at what my answer would be.
The trajectory of your life allows you, if you pay attention and listen to your inner core, to connect you with what your genius is in life. So here is a question for you:
What’s your genius? Take some time to ponder and answer this, I would highly recommend that you do, with integrity and truth, for the very first time in your life. If you find the answer, therein lies the ability that will allow your life to be extraordinary because what you can do, what you’ve focused in on to represent your life, no one else can duplicate.
1. Develop an intimate understanding as to what success represents for you
Authentically gain an understanding of what that means to you. If you are unsure or uncertain about this, there is a huge window of opportunity for others to label you as they wish and not as you would want. Help yourself by defining it through people you admire, thus closing the ability for others to label you.
2. Success is measured by a state of mind, not by tangibles
How have you handled stress or failure? Major setbacks can either be interpreted as a loss or as an opportunity to seek something new. Starting out rather than ending up. What’s your approach?
3. Do not let others’ meaning of Success define you
The only stress you should impose on yourself is the one that is within you, the one that is used to give a framework to the energy you wish to apply to have a successful outcome in whatever you are focused on. Lips of others be damned! They are not in your internal make up and have no idea about what the road to your success looks like or feels like.
There is no end to achieving and attaining success. The road is not a finite one. But a yellow brick road of wonders, questions, people, situations and circumstances, choices, good things, bad things, and everything in between. All presenting themselves not on our time, but the right time for things to happen. And how that success materializes in your life happens to be a very personal expression of what you envisioned for yourself, and not through the barometer of others.
