What Does Success Look Like to You?

You’re looking to achieve, or to maintain, success, but do you really know what success looks like?

Close your eyes for a moment and picture your success. However, don’t imagine what success WILL be like at some unknown point in the future. Instead, use your imagination to see your success NOW. See and feel you as being successful.

What does YOUR success look like?

Did you see yourself in great clothes? Did you see yourself living in a beautiful home? Did you see a car, a boat, or a plane?

Did you see yourself giving and providing for family and those less fortunate?

Did you see yourself in a gentle and loving relationship?

There are as many different versions of success as there are people trying to achieve success. Everyone’s picture of success is different. They may have similarities but, ultimately, your success is as unique and distinct as you are yourself.

It’s very important that you realize this fact. Why? So that you make sure that you are living your successful life, not someone else’s.

So many times people will say, “I want exactly what he has!”, or, “I want to be just like her.”

There’s nothing wrong with taking inspiration from another person but you must realize that you will never have exactly what another has or be just like they are. You are unique. You are distinct in every way, and so are they. It is quite simply impossible for you to be, have or do exactly what someone else is, has or does.

You might come close. In fact, you might work so hard a being someone else that it becomes difficult to tell the difference, but you will never be anyone but you. So why waste your time trying to be anyone else? Be you and live your success!

When you recognize that your version of success is unique to you and you alone, you will achieve freedom from the need to constantly compare your success to that of someone else. When you live your success, you experience contentment regardless of how your success differs from someone else’s. If you are trying to be successful according to someone else’s definition, then you will be constantly trying to keep up as their unique version of success evolves and changes as they do.

I tell you this because I have wasted years of my life trying to achieve what other people have defined as success. I assumed that if I got what they had and did what they did that that would make me a success. I never stopped to think about what MY true definition of success was. So I could never achieve my success quite simply because I never truly knew what success meant to me.

So what’s my version of success. I can tell you, but please don’t try to substitute it for your definition of success. You must find your definition of success. I can simply relate to you my definition, which is that I am a teacher. I am a success when I am teaching others. That’s it. That’s what I believe makes me a success.

As I live my successful life, I may achieve material things that might be considered indicators of my success. But they are only symbols. I don’t need a Lamborghini to teach. I’m teaching now, so, at this moment, I’m a success. I am successful now. I cannot be successful in the future because I cannot BE in the future; I can only be now.

This does not mean that I do not have ambitions or goals. I do. And I work to achieve those goals. But my notion or perception of myself as a successful person is not predicated on any one, particular, future event or accomplishment. In other words, I do not wait on that event to consider myself successful.

You should never look to the future to define your success. The future is only imagined, it is not real. To experience success, you must experience it now, at this moment. If you get into a habit of only ever anticipating success, you will never be successful. There will always be something, which you are not currently experiencing, that you will associate with success. And when you achieve it, you will quickly replace it by yet another future dream of success.

You must not fall into that habit. See your success in everything you do, and see it now.

Article Source: http://www.realworldtactics.com/articledirectory

Don Loughran is an adult educator, course developer and entrepreneur who is passionate about helping people discover the success in their lives, careers and businesses. You can get learn more about the factors that effect success by visiting Don's Factors For Success blog at FactorsForSuccess.com. Don can be emailed at Don@FactorsForSuccess.com

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