How Do You Spell Success?

How Do You Spell Success?

Quick, off the top of your head, can you name three successes you’ve enjoyed in your life? How about three from yesterday? What are your criteria for success? Do you need to win something, or get acknowledged by us? Or do you determine your success by how you feel?

It can be a tricky thing, measuring our success. We get all sorts of rules as we grow up for what constitutes success. Some of them support us, and some really don’t.

Years ago, when I was struggling with the whole concept of success, I found myself thinking about the bad day I had. I was praying for a miracle to snap me out of my blues. The thought I had was along these lines:  What if, during my bad day, I was protected from all sorts of other things that were a whole lot worse than my bad day? What if I didn’t get hit by that turning car? What if I left the bar just before the two crazy guys started to fight? What if I stopped just before the mugger got to me? Well, you get the idea.

It was a small shift in my point of view, but it worked. It also gave me a cartoon movie in my head, where anvils and pianos fell on the sidewalk just behind me, and those grates in the sidewalk for delivering waited until I passed to open. It made me feel lucky.

That sense of being lucky can be a nice part of feeling successful. Especially when we take responsibility for our luck. So much of being happy is about feeling fortunate. An old friend used to talk about feeling lucky, or fortunate, with a sense of shame, like she was lucky, but didn’t deserve it. She dropped the last part, and has been enjoying great success in all areas of her life.

Why am I fortunate? What makes me successful? Why am I lucky? How do good circumstances find me?

What would your day be like if you kept your eyes open for all the luck that surrounds you? What would your day be like if you kept finding nice treats, happy coincidences, serendipitous events all day long? What if finding that nickel made a difference? Or getting an email from your old pal you hadn’t heard from in a while? What if you felt like finding that parking spot, or a coupon on the shelf for something you needed was just for you?

As we start looking for good things to happen, we find them. All over the place. And things will often work out for us in ways we might not expect, but in ways that we like.

You can call it luck, or the Law of Attraction, you can call it living each day successfully.

When we start to expect those nice things, it shifts our mood. We get a bit more smiley, and we find that people smile back at us. Sometimes, a smile from a stranger can feel like a miracle. We start expecting nice things, and we find ourselves doing little nice things, just because it feels good.

How do I spot good things? What makes me notice little kindnesses? How do I see that my life is sweet?

Loosening our definitions of success can create a big shift in our point of view. Some days, I may count getting dressed before 3:00 being successful. With that attitude, I may find a pocket of motivation or inspiration that I might have missed if I berated myself for lounging around so long.

How have I changed from judging my success on old criteria to finding successes every day?

(c) 2014 Pam Guthrie all rights reserved 02062014