“Success is the feeling of broad satisfaction that comes when you accomplish goals that are set to match your personal strengths, interests and values.”

 

The above definition indicates several things:

 

1. Success is a personal feeling. Only you can get that feeling for you, and only you can know if you’ve reached it. No one can convince you: only YOU know when you feel it! You can be working a high-paying job, live in a mansion, and own an expensive car. But someone telling you, “Boy, you’re really successful!” doesn’t feel very good or mean much if you’re stressed out at that job, have no time to relax in your home, and the car brings you no joy. If those things have no personal value to you, they’re just trinkets from someone else’s imagination. Go after what gives YOU a feeling of success,

 

2. Success reflects the planning and reaching of goals. While it may seem that certain people were always going to reach their goals, it didn’t happen in a vacuum. Ultra-successful people plot out the goals they want to achieve, and stay on the path to reach them. Lots of rock bands play hundreds of shows on rickety stages in empty clubs, for nights on end, before they start working their way up to stadiums. (As a musician, I can confirm that performing with no crowd is a real bummer.) But they stuck to their plan and persisted, and eventually they achieved goals as artists and musicians. Be persistent in pursuit of your goals.

 

3. Success only works if your goals are reflections of you. If you set a goal to improve your health by running 5K races, and you never win a single race, but you meet your health goal, are you successful? ABSOLUTELY! You set a goal based around what was important TO YOU. Winning the race was always a secondary goal. That doesn’t mean you wouldn’t like to win a race or two, or that the first-place trophy for winning wouldn’t look great in a place of honor in your home. It just means that you want something else that is more important to you. You valued the health improvement over high performance, and you achieved your goal. Celebrate the goals that align with who you are.

 

I always tell people, “Don’t let other people’s successes define your goals.” If you take nothing else from this post, REMEMBER THIS QUOTE. It is the difference between discovering yourself and blazing your own trail, or spending your time and energy chasing after what other people tell you success is. Being yourself is the quickest path to being happier!