April 7, 2015 - Written by: Yazmin Joy

Are You Successful? 4 Questions You Need to Ask Yourself

Am I or am I not successful? THAT is the question!

I am being challenged, people. I am being haunted by this question at every twist and turn of my fumbling, tumbling journey through life.

Success and the need to be successful in the eyes of others seems to be high on the agenda amongst Generation Y. Oh, he’s doing well. She’s on her way. So-and-so just got a big break. Comments that are bitter sweet when you feel like everyone else is achieving great things and your life looks like cat shit in comparison.

Often it feels like I’m constantly partaking in some sick dick measuring contest which is all too often based on comparison. The worst part is, it’s other people that seem to be setting the bar for how I feel about myself and my ‘progress’.

So peeps, I want to challenge how we think about success by asking 4 alternative questions:

1. ‘Am I living the life I want to live?’

Not career, not lifestyle, but LIFE.

Leadership expert John Maxwell often talks about how success is the culmination of lots of little daily victories. This highlights something really pivotal about the nature of true success: that it is a process not a single event.

Often we think of success in terms BIG FAT milestones: the promotion, the pay rise, the gold medal… but these breakthroughs do not come out of nowhere.

Success is in the daily grind. It is the inability to give up. It is the habits you build INTO your life. It is the training and the rehearsals that go before crunch time.

If you have not reached a particular milestone in your life that does NOT mean you are UNSUCCESSFUL. The daily victories add up. Stay focused on what you are doing NOW.

Author Cheryl Strayed wrote:

‘Don’t lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don’t have a career. You have a life. Do the work. Keep the faith. Be true blue. You are a writer because you write. Keep writing and quit your bitching.’

What a babe! And how true…

2. ‘Are the sacrifices I am making in aid of something that I believe has a greater value to me?’

Let’s keep it REAL. All of us have to make sacrifices in our lives. Time, money, energy, emotion: these are finite resources. Where we spend them in some areas, will have to be taken from others.

In a blog I wrote about sacrifice I talked about how the meaning of sacrifice is to give up something for something you believe if of greater value.

I stand by this.

If it feels like your peers are surpassing you remind yourself of what you are striving for. Write it down and stick it to your wall/desk/bedside table.

NOTHING worth doing can be achieved without sacrifice. But it IS down to you to decide whether you are making sacrifices for a future you believe is best for you?

3. ‘Am I focusing on my own shit?’

STOP comparing yourself to others. Just stop it, okay.

When I look at people more ‘successful’ than me in my field of work quite often I am inspired and motivated, other times I feel like getting drunk and listening to Keane. Why? Because when I am not focusing on my own shit I start measuring my life by other people’s standards and goals instead of my own desires. This makes be uber depressed because usually my achievements are no way near as impressive.

So note to self: focus on your own shit.

4. ‘Am I at peace?’

Do my core values match my outer behaviour. Do I remain consistent and true to myself. Is this right for me? This is a question I am learning to ask myself when I am faced with big decisions.

When Oprah interviewed film producer DeVon Franklin she asked him what the definition of success meant to him. He replied: Peace.

To be at peace with yourself means to look in the mirror and accept yourself and the choices you are making with an easy heart.

Hi-five!

Do you feel like you’re under achieving? Do you have your own measurements for personal success? I would love to know your thoughts on success, and what it means to you so please do share.

Have a great week peeps!

Yaz x

If you enjoyed this article, why not check out ‘Reading Between the Lines’?