"Are you successful?" Perhaps you'll offer my favorite answer - "it depends." In what area of life? Compared to what / to whom?
The beauty of success is that it is within your power to determine the objective by which you will be measured. Often, however, we allow others to tell us what success is - we allow our parents, spouse, co-workers, peers, and friends to define our goals.
A pastor who played a prominent role in his community once told me, "I wish I had spent more time with my children." My response: "You can't have it both ways. You wouldn't be where you are today in terms of influence if you had chosen to spend more time with your children. Would you have been willing to give this up?"
Let me ask three questions:
- What do you want out of life? Go through the various areas of your life and determine what you are seeking to accomplish.
- Is what you are seeking worthy of your life?
- How are you doing moving toward the goals you've identified?
It comes as no surprise that people want different things out of life. A college student once told me that she wanted to be married four times (personally I'm content with once). She wanted to experience life with different people having different personalities and perspectives. I told her that, in all fairness, she should make sure she let the men she dated know about this goal.
The answer to the second question depends unavoidably on your subjective values. People have given their lives to many different causes and purposes. What you think worthy of your life might not impress me at all. My life purpose is "freeing people to be themselves." My wife thinks I'm automatically a success since people, by definition, are themselves. Obviously I have a somewhat different sense in mind - helping people find who they are called to be, how they are wired, and why they are here.
Answering the third question involves evaluation and measurement. It is essential that our goals are behavioral and not mere abstractions that can never be defined or reached. Personally I don't find it a problem that some goals are never reached as long as you continue making progress toward them. Other times we fail to reach a goal, but are successful nonetheless. I wanted to complete my PhD by the time I was 30. Instead I spent three years in ministry and completed it at the age of 32. Those three years changed my life for the better and made the delayed achievement well worth it.
Are you successful? You must answer that question for yourself and may have different answers for different areas of your life. Others may answer this question about you based on their definitions, but you are not required to accept those evaluations. Of course, if your boss has a definition of "success" for your employment you might benefit from knowing and fulfilling it. This is true of all relational commitments (e.g., marriage).
My concern: Don't spend your life chasing a definition of "success" that is ultimately unfulfilling. "But how do I know it's unfulfilling before I arrive?" By reading and communicating with others who have chosen and reached the same destination you are pursuing, making sure that the place they describe is where you hope to arrive. Don't arrive at the destination only to find that neither it nor the trip were worth your effort and investment.
At Julian Consulting, we are here to help you succeed - building on your natural wiring and enabling you to align your objectives with that wiring so you achieve personal success while contributing to the success of your organization.
