Are you successful?

Many of us measure our own success against what others are doing in their lives. You look at someone you grew up with who has a high powered job, earns a fortune, lives in a five bedroom house with the love of their life and two kids. You may compare their reality to your own and conclude that they are more successful than you. Is that really true though?

Comparing myself to others is something I have been guilty of, and probably something we all do from time to time.  Looking at others in my peer group who are seemingly more "successful" than me is only going to do one thing - make me feel fed up.  That person earns more money than me, has a bigger house, a better car, a fruitful career. This kind of mentality will not get me anywhere so, for some time now, whenever those kinds of thoughts enter my mind, I stop them in their tracks.

So if we are not measuring our own success against the success of others how do we measure it? How about measuring your success against your own success code?

Success for one person could look totally different to how success looks to someone else.  It's a case of working out how you define success and concocting a plan as to how you are going to achieve it.

What's important to you?

Sit down and make a list of all the things that are really important to you in life.  Be completely honest as this list is only for you (unless you'd like to share with someone else).  On this list could be anything - money, family, acceptance, health, fitness, charity, love, career, travel.

This list you've created will give you an indication of the kind of life you want to live and what's truly important to you.  You may spend every waking hour thinking and worrying about your job, but your job may not feature anywhere on your list.  What does that tell you?  Maybe too much time and focus is going into something that's not important to you.  This exercise can be quite telling and may help you to re-evaluate what is actually significant to your life, and what's not.

Your success code

Your list of what's important to you shapes your own personal success code.  Study your list and start making a new list (I love lists!)  This time you are writing down the things which create your success code.  You are answering the question - What does success look like to me?  On this list could be things like - owning my own home, having a family, having a career that helps others, bringing up your children to be good people, seeing the world. Your success code is personal to you and it's for that reason that you can't compare your success to others.

Measure success against your personal goals and live by your own success code.  

What next? 

So you've worked out what's important to you and how success looks to you, what's next?  Take your lists and really work out how you are going to be successful.  By that, I mean how you are going to live a life that aligns with what's important to you. Consider your long term goals - imagine yourself living a successful life in five years from now.  How will you get there?  Break it down into smaller, short term goals.  If one of your goals is to find love, take action. Start a new hobby to meet new people or sign up to online dating. Before you strive to become a successful person you need to start with the basics and work out what success means to you. You may climb the career ladder in your chosen career gaining authority, wealth and admiration from others along the way, but if this doesn't match what's actually important to you, how can this be defined as success?  

Am I successful?

I have taken the steps above and so have a clear sense of what success means to me. For the first time, all areas of my life are aligned with my list of what's important to me, and this is not by accident. I sat down to make this list a couple of years ago, and since then I've been making small changes, and taking action to make sure my reality is in line with what's important to me.  In this sense I'm successful, but success is a continuous journey and there are more goals on my (many) lists which I am working towards.  Putting focus and energy into my own success and happiness stops me comparing myself to others which can only be a positive thing.  I aim for a successful week, a successful month, a successful year and I measure this success against my ever evolving lists of goals and hopefully, one day, I'll be able to conclude I've had a successful life.  

Figure out what's important to you, create your success code and live your life by this.  

Being Kind to Yourself -vs- Forcing Yourself

I can be a bit of a soft touch when it comes to my relationship with me.  Although in many ways I am very motivated and disciplined when it comes to getting stuff done, I do give myself a bit too much of an easy ride, and as of this week, that is changing! 

The last couple of weeks have been a bit ‘blah’ for no significant reason (other than perhaps fighting the cold that everyone seems to have at the moment and being a bit hormonal)  I’ve lacked my usual ‘get up and go’ and throughout this period I’ve been very aware of the self-talk that has accompanied me through this period of ‘blah-ness’

Do any of these sound familiar?

• I feel a bit tired, I’ll go to the gym when I’m feeling in the mood
• I’m stressed, I’ll just eat chocolate and watch TV all evening – I deserve it
• I have a lot on, I deserve to hit snooze and have another hour in bed

I've been guilty of telling myself all of the above and many more excuses along these lines.  I’ll be walking home from work after a long day thinking, “I have to go to the gym” but then a little voice will pipe up and say “Look after yourself George, you’ve got a lot on, just rest tonight.” It’s oh so easy to fall into this trap.  I like to tell myself I’m 'looking after myself' but am I?  There's been many times when I’ve so badly not wanted to go to my spin class.  I’d rather have done ANYTHING else, but when I’ve forced myself I’ve felt absolutely amazing afterwards and so proud I made myself do it.  The difficulty is that there is a very fine line between having a genuine reason to give yourself a break and making an excuse.
  

I recently watched a TED talk - 'How to stop screwing yourself over' by Mel Robbins and it made me realise that I give myself way too much of an easy ride at times.  Just think, if I did force myself to do certain things I could reach so much more of my potential. We can really desperately want something – for instance – to drop a couple of dress sizes, but that desire doesn’t always translate to the desire to really desperately want to spend hours a week in a sweaty gym.  So how do we keep our goal in sight and get what we want, when the steps we need to take in order to achieve our goal may, at times, not be so appealing?

The below tips have helped me in the past to stay focused and get off my bum and just DO IT and I’ll be keeping these things in mind next time I even come close to letting myself of the hook:

1. Visualise, visualise, visualise: And I don’t just mean visualise the end goal, for example fitting into that old pair of jeans, I mean visualise how great you’ll feel when you force yourself to do the thing you need to do in order to achieve your goal. Then remember that feeling for the next time you are tempted to make an excuse. 
2. Push through the comfort zone:  Trying new things and taking on new challenges can feel like a leap too far at times but the reward of pushing your way through your comfort zone and opening up a whole new realm of possibility is far greater than the temporary unease.
3. Make yourself accountable: Tell people your goal and how you’re going to achieve it - your partner, friend, work colleague, life coach.  It’s never a great feeling to tell someone you’ve failed at doing something you’d committed to doing.  Instead, think how brilliant you’ll feel to report back and say “I did it!"

Of course there are going to be times when we need to give ourselves a break but my resolution from now on is to recognise when I’m being a bit soft on myself and kick myself into shape. 

If I look back on all the countless times I’ve been ‘nice’ to myself and let myself off the hook, I wonder if I’d be further along in achieving my goals had I just forced myself to do it?  The answer to this is most definitely 'yes', so when it comes to my relationship with myself I’m going to enforce a bit of tough love in order to get what I want.