Define Your Success

Reality is but a mirror of your consistent thoughts.

I know it sounds all super vague and mystical right?

Let’s try it this way:

What you focus on dictates what you see in the world and what you believe to be true, will become your reality.

So with that in mind… Here are 3 questions I’d like you, oh glorious reader, to think about… 

1. What is your definition of success? 

2. What is your focus in life? 

3. What lifestyle do you want to live?

When I began to think about these questions, it helped me realize that what I was doing to ‘be successful’ was actually not the life I wanted to live... at all. 

I’m sure you’ve probably heard this before… but its time to hear it again from me…

I’ll relate it to software engineering since that’s what we talk about here…and I’ll make sure it doesn’t sound all mystical and Law of Attraction’y. Please indulge my limited understanding. ‍

If you have vague business requirements, with missing information, lacking documentation or have gaps in knowledge... you get poorly developed software right?

It’ll work sure, but it’ll have bugs and crashes… it’ll be missing features, and may not be what the user wants at all…

Its the same thing with life... if you have no definition of what success means to you, or have only a vague concept or idea of what that should be, the subconscious mind will act on your predominant thoughts, no matter what they are and that’s how you’ll see life.

Sure you’ll be alive and life will work out, but you’ll be a victim of the winds of circumstance.

If your main thoughts of success are ‘success is so hard… I can never achieve it’ or ‘To be successful I have to manipulate others’… these things become blockers.

Define your lifestyle

Your ideal lifestyle may be living on a piece of open land in the mountains, having a huge family, living on an island, right on the ocean shore… it could be running a Fortune 30 enterprise or a small 1 person business... or it could be living in the big city, a melting pot full of all types of people and excitement, traveling... whatever. It can be anything.

But my point is, you have to choose. You must define what success is for you, you have to choose what your focus in life will be, you must choose the lifestyle you want to live, aim to achieve it and build your organizational funding (that which funds your life be it a job, self employment or a business) around that focus.

If you fail to do this, you’ll be as but a leaf in the wind, blown in any direction the wind takes you. You’ll be at a perpetual stand still seemingly at the mercy of the whims and trends of the immediate thoughts. 

It doesn’t matter if your goals change, your job or business structure changes, or if your supporting team stops working with you down the line, the vital part is ensuring your focus will output what you want and taking steps toward it.

Wrap up:

So again… One more time for the win:

• What is your definition of success? 

• What is your focus in life? 

• What lifestyle do you want to live?

Take the week to think about them, write these 3 things down, we will visit them again many times. 

P.S > Stretch Goal: 

What unique experiences or passions do you have that you can use to bring value to others? 

Until next week…