Lagniappe

I was talking to a dear friend and the subject of Success came up. After we spoke for a while I realized that it wasn't just the two of us that have struggled to define what success means to us. In our society we live with so many definitions of success put forth by others; you should be earning twice your age, you should be married and have children by the age of x, big house, big car, big stack of stuff, etc. Why do we focus on such a narrow definition of success? Then we chase this narrow definition and maybe some day catch it. Then what? We got a pile of stuff, a divorce, disenfranchised children and we are miserable.

Our parents, who want the best for us, push us to their definitions of success, which too often fits, in the above list. Our friends and older siblings lead by example in the mad rush for stuff. In the media we are barraged with messages telling us that without this particular stuff we are somehow deficient.

I've got news for you. There's a lot more to a successful life than a pile of stuff, which breaks, gets outdated, lost, stolen, and replaced with the urge for more, newer stuff. Most of us want to be happy and end our life without a lot of regrets about what we should have done.

'Would you tell me please, which way I ought to go from here?'
'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to, said the Cat.
'I don't much care where –' said Alice.
'Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.

This conversation from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a good lesson for us. If we want to be successful and happy we have to have to know what we want and we need a plan to get there. And this plan should reflect what we want to do - not anyone else. I know, that can be the difficult part because we're not used to thinking about it.

Let's take a look at some alternative measures of success to help build this plan. I've read a lot of literature on this topic over the years and there are several categories that keep coming up.

Write down your goals for:

1. Relationships
2. Spiritual Life
3. Career
4. Physical Body
5. Home Environment
6. Mental State of Being
7. Financial
8. Leisure

I wrote this poem in 1986 but wasn't ready to follow my own advice.

The journey inward, to determine what you really want out of life can be frightening but it's also very rewarding. Or you can get a resource like Live Your Dream by Joyce Chapman that helps you define these goals, turn them into a plan and implement them. Have dreams beyond stuff, determine how to achieve them, work happily to make them a reality and live happily ever after ;-) And the timing's great as we get ready to step into 2001.