Are you successful ?
The unicorn you are chasing…
Success
At any given moment it’s almost impossible to be connected to social media and not read an article or an ad or a post by someone about how to be successful and the top three, five, seven, ten, sixteen, twenty or even fifty secrets to success that you don’t know and someone else do!
The same applies to networking events or social gatherings, how to succeed is on the radar.
But before you get dragged into the chase and the vicious circle of success…take a few minutes and reflect:
1. What is success to you? 
is it a thought?
a feeling?
a word?
a number?
a title?
a possession?
a person?
2. How do you measure your success?
Do you measure it when your bank account hits a certain number?
Or when being promoted by your employer (who btw thinks you are replaceable at any given moment)?
By receiving an award?
By living with your core values?
Or perhaps by working with passion?
Do you measure it by having a loving supporting partner? Or by having kids?
Or by being healthy?
Now that you have defined what success is for you and your own measurements, ask yourself this question:
3. How do you know that you are not already successful? could you already be successful without consciously knowing it? reflect on it Now..
And then…
4. Why is there a collective assumption and presupposition that you are not successful?
There is so much information everywhere and easily available to you and me which has great advantages in one way, but also it’s overloading our cave-man brain and overwhelming our humanity…
And because perception is reality, what you perceive about others becomes real to you …and since we are conditioned to compare ourselves with others, we end up comparing our real selves with the perception of others.
And there is where we fall victims to technology and to those of us who know how to create a “successful” perception of themselves, which -despite all the successes we have in our lives- makes us unconsciously choose to cave into our insecurities and believe we are not successful..
But…
5. What specifically makes it so important to succeed? and more importantly, what is the problem with failing?
Now, ask yourself and be honest with the answer:
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What would REALLY happen if you fail? -
Would it change how you view yourself if you don’t succeed? if yes, how?
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Or is it someone else’s view of you that would change?
All answers can be equally right and wrong, it’s your perception of the world that leads them one way or the other…
A final reflection from my experience, from my interaction with my beloved late grandmother and from my work with the elderly living in elderly homes:
When we get to that age of helplessness and when walking independently to the toilet in the morning is a huge success, what is left are tons of memories, pictures to help us remember when our memory fails us and hopefully a few loving hearts.
