Success Building: The Challenge of Showing Up Every Day

There's an awful lot of wisdom in the world, related to this whole quest of how we build success.

I typically take it all with a grain of salt because "success" is an idea largely in the eye of the beholder, meaning there's not likely to be one prescribed path to getting there.

Looking back across my life, I have never been what mainstream society might describe as "successful."

From my own vantage point, I could argue that I have occasionally been successful, at least temporarily, mostly for short periods of time.

One of the things I recognized — many years ago — is that my version of success is heavily entwined with whether or not I am feeling like I am living an authentic life, in the moment.

As a "thing," that has never been tied to the size of my bank balance. Which might also explain why that bank balance has seldom been very large!

One thing I do recognize to be true — regardless of what you consider success to be — is that success is substantially contingent on your willingness and ability to show up every day.

When I say "show up," I'm not referring to actual going to work, or to spending some prescribed number of hours per day doing something... I'm referring to having the mindset of putting daily effort into whatever your heart's interpretation of your "calling" might be.

In other words, merely "dabbling occasionally" in whatever you want to bring to fruition is not likely to bring you to success.

You need to make a commitment — much like being in a marriage or relationship — to put effort into it, every day.

There are remarkably few things in my life that I can honestly claim to have given that level of dedication... and that likely holds true for most of us, on this planet.

We tend to dabble in things, even when we are telling ourselves that we are "taking it seriously."

Even though it is not my career, I take my writing seriously, and I do something pretty much every day. I also consider every article; every post to be another step towards becoming a better and more successful writer.

What's interesting about it is — even as I am putting these words together — the "success" of this post is less about whether I earn some rewards or not, than about whether or not I did my best and (hopefully) added at least one small nugget of information or insight of use to someone else.

Many people tend to get too bogged down in money as the measure of success.

But let me tell you a quick story... a fictitious example, if you will.

When you're on the operating table in the hospital because you need to have brain surgery for some reason... would you rather have the person holding the scalpel be the doctor who went to medical school "because doctors make a lot of money," or the doctor who went
to medical school because of a deep inner calling of truly wanting to heal people?

I know which one I would rather have at my side.

And I would also submit that it is the dedicated healer who is actually the more "successful" doctor!

But, as I said at the beginning, we each have to define what success means to us, as individuals.

Which means we should also be wary of letting other people define the kind of success we should be striving for, and putting our energy in.

Regardless of which path you choose... you will be helped along by simply showing up every day!

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great week ahead!

How about you? How do you define success? Is it an inner sense, or defined by external factors? How will you know if you are successful? Leave a comment if you feel so inclined — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

(All text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is ORIGINAL CONTENT, created expressly for this platform — Not posted elsewhere!)

Created at 2024.09.15 23:38PDT
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