WAHOO!!

WAHOO!!

How do you measure success for yourself? Do you have super high standards so you don’t get there very often? Do you have super low standards so you are almost always there? What do you think?

I like to have a variety of standards for how I measure success, depending on the situation.

Why am I successful? How do things go my way? What makes me victorious?

When I get home, I like to review my day at work. What was I successful at? What do I want to change, or work on? Is there someplace where I need to tweak my attitude? What do I need to let go of to have a nice evening? What do I appreciate about my day?

Usually by the end of my review, I’m feeling pretty successful. I’ve often found things to be pleased about. I’ve often found things to feel proud of, or I feel accomplished. If I feel bad at the end of the day, I know I need to flip that around. I try to do that before I even go in the house. Kickin’ off my emotional shoes, as it were.

Taking that bit of time to look back over stuff, and to think about the Wannado’s for tomorrow, helps me think about resolutions, and solutions; the outcomes I actually want.

Over and over, we find out that we will enjoy our lives more when we take a little bit of time to think about what we want, when we take a bit of time to think about how we will decide we are successful, when we take a bit of time to consider how to progress, how to solve, how to resolve.

Some time back, I realized that I had taken success to be synonymous with selling out, ignoring my values for some kind of personal gain. Why would I want to be successful if that’s what it meant? So I had to redefine success for myself. I had to do the same thing with “winner” and “compliant” and a number of other words over the years.

Over and over, we find that the semantics rather than the idea, are getting in the way. Usually, all we need to do is make a little shift somewhere, change a word, modify a definition, and we can take on a new concept that makes things way better.

Why am I successful? What makes me a winner? How do I find solutions?

When I decide what these words mean to me, instead of just rejecting them out of hand, I accomplish several things, all of which may sound silly. I stop being a word-victim, that is, a victim of language that might actually be useful to me. I take back my power from The Media or Them or whatever you want to call that huge and complicated structure.

I watched a favorite TV show I haven’t seen in months. I haven’t watched “regular TV for a long time, and was astonished at the commercials and how I felt listening to them. They were telling me all sorts of horrible, scary stuff about me, and horrible scary solutions. It was eye-opening, I must say. You might wanna try it, if you watch TV, that is, noticing the messages TV gives you about yourself, your family, the world. Yikes.

Meanwhile, I would rather count my miracles.

How have I changed from feeling stuck in my problems to celebrating my success?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 05162014