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a2a Inspirations>
The REAL secret to success
February 7, 2006
‘Feeling and longing are the motive forces behind all human
endeavour
and human creations.’
Albert Einstein
Greetings everyone! I am Jenny Mallos and, as Linda
mentioned last week, I will be sending you a weekly message
in her absence. I hope it inspires you as much as I know
Linda does!
The topic of ‘being successful’ has been a prominent one
for me and my clients over
the last couple of weeks. Whether it’s reading profiles on
successful people in your
particular industry or reading books or attending courses
on various success
strategies and secrets, there is no shortage of information
out there.
But there is one thing missing: Has anyone bothered to ask
you what success
means to YOU? Do you have your own definition of success?
And if you don’t how
will you know when you have reached ‘SUCCESS’ in your
world?
Too often we equate success with money. This is
understandable in some ways,
since money is tangible and a universal concept. Whole
nations gauge their relative
success or not based on economic performance as do
companies and businesses.
The more you have, the more successful you are.
Unfortunately this has also
become the yardstick for measuring an individual’s level of
success.
But I believe we KNOW – whether we are conscious of it or
not – that money does
not equal success. It may be a part of the equation but it
certainly isn’t the whole
picture. The problem is we don’t spend enough time, if any,
on figuring out what
those other parts of the picture are for each of us.
Too often we equate success with someone else’s story. We
read about how other
people became successful - what they did, the obstacles
they overcame, the
sacrifices they made and what they finally achieved that
made them successful in
THEIR eyes – only to adopt THEIR model as a model of
success for ourselves. What
was meant to INSPIRE us to be all we can be ends up
becoming our weakest link
because we end up thinking: ‘But I could never do THAT.’
Who said you had to do THAT in order to be successful? I’m
pretty confident that all
those people we read about in books and newspapers would
never assume
someone else has to achieve what they did, or even do it
the way they did, in order
to be ranked among the success stories of the world.
Success, like most things, is a
very subjective and personal thing.
Success is also a PERSPECTIVE. I vividly remember a story
my coach told me about
two participants in an Anthony Robbins seminar (she was one
of the coaches at the
time). One person stood up and said he thought he was a
failure because he didn’t
meet all his targets at work, he hadn’t reached his ideal
weight yet, his kids didn’t
always listen to him and he had let his wife down on
several occasions by not doing
what he promised.
And then another person stood up and said he had just lost
his job, his wife left
him, he was overweight, he had no home to speak of and he
had to borrow money
in order to attend the seminar. When asked whether he
considered himself a
success or failure he almost shouted that he was a success.
When asked him why
he thought that, he responded: ‘Because I’m here!’
Which yardstick are YOU using to measure your level of
success? Have you clearly
defined what success looks like and what it means for you?
This week, I invite you
to seriously take this task on: spend time defining and
writing out your personal
definition of success. Then put it somewhere where you can
see it daily to remind yourself.
Have an inspiring week!
Jenny
www.totaltransformationlifecoaching.com
Email: coachjen@totaltransformationlifecoaching.com
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