Some want private jets, some want huge houses, some want a six figure income, some want a spouse and kids and enough money to live on. Some want to run everything in the world. Some want political office. Some want a private island. Some want vacations in exotic lands. Some just want a steadily paying job.
My definition of “Success” has changed a lot over the years.
Once, I would have thought that I had to be rich. “Rich” meant a few million in the bank, a fancy car, trips to exotic places. I thought I’d probably never see “real” success.
Now, I can see that I have met many of my own definitions of success. I work a steady job and feed my little family on one income. We have a bit to put by each month. I have a paid off car, a little old, it’s true, but paid off. We eat good food and live in a place that suits us, and that we like. We don’t take any kind of government assistance. We have a few published books to our credit. We have time for art and living.
How did we get there?
By not giving up. By not becoming enmeshed in credit. By jumping on opportunities when they arose. By living frugally. By saying “no” to cable bills and smart phones. By saying “no” to the huge TV and the false need of a new car every few years. By standing by our friends and building loyalty with them. By not living beyond our means.
Some would still consider us poor, but it’s all in how you look at it.
What would greater success mean for us? Our dreams are still fairly simple. We want more exposure for our books, more books of ours on the shelf, more art of ours on the wall, one more nice computer. Someday we want a home that costs maybe two to three hundred thousand dollars. We want a bigger nest egg.
Those dreams are not so grandiose. They can be achieved with hard work and ingenuity.
Why not take a few minutes to measure the places where you are successful? Think about what real success means to you. Think about the paths to get there. Maybe the path is shorter than you think.
Mindflight 
I love this post. The idea of what success looks like has certainly changed for me as well. Now success is measured when I allow myself to be creative and actually let others see it or look at the dreams I have manifested without much money. The path to my dreams has been sometimes just getting out of my own way of limiting my ideas of what is possible.
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Ultimately, I think success comes down to doing what we planned to – it’s interesting to watch how that changes.
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Darned ‘society’ distracts us from our own true success and we even think sometimes we’re so far away from success when we’re probably there. Great post! Thank you!
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You’re welcome, and thank you!
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