What does Being successful mean to you?

What if being successful is not about how big your house is or how many trips to Europe you’ve taken this year or whether you have a second home in Aspen or whether you are driving a new, expensive car?  What if being successful is about leaving the planet a better place than when you got here?  What if being successful is about feeling successful.

Lots of mega-wealthy people and superstars do not feel successful.  Maybe they are not giving back or giving back for the wrong reasons; maybe their motives aren’t pure. Maybe they don’t feel worthy of success or have nagging doubts or negativity that they have never dealt with.  What's happening on the outside is not necessarily how you feel on the inside.

So how can you feel successful? What can you do differently? What I am going to share with you, you may have heard before.  Knowing is not enough.  It's about making changes to how you live your life and how you are in the world.  It's about upgrading your attitude to gratitude, appreciation, and acceptance. 

The key is to be fully present and stop worrying about the future and judging the past; stop feeling bad about mistakes; stop holding onto regrets; stop not allowing yourself to heal and move forward.

Here are some simple steps to get you there.  Although they are easy to understand, it’s up to you to take action until they are a part of who you are.

Key #1

Stop. Cease all activity for a few moments and breathe.  Breathing in through your nose and out of your nose with the out breath longer than the in breath.  This tells your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system that's it's okay to relax, release, soften and let go. 

Shallow breathing sends you into fight or flight response. Take the time every day to practice this simple breathing technique, retraining your body to accept a new, chill way of being.  Practice makes permanent.  So, schedule times of the day to engage. 

Notice how when you feel when your lungs really fill up with fresh air and let the old, stale air out; you feel better. You are fully oxygenated. You’ve let something go. Notice how you feel when you breathe this way; notice how it's easier to let go; notice how it's easier to allow your body to let go of stress.

Key #2

Be grateful. Gratitude is a choice. You may say you are grateful, but nothing is real until you feel it.  Choose to feel grateful.  Sometime every day for 10 minutes, write down what you are grateful for about that day. Write a paragraph describing something you have experienced or observed or been a part of for which you are truly grateful.

Keep a Gratitude Journal. Once a week, read some of the things that you wrote. See how your life changes as you express and feel grateful for what you already have, all the gifts that life presents when you are aware and pay attention to the nuances of your life.

Key #3

Lovingly and with clear, strong boundaries, parent your inner child.  We parent our kids; but not ourselves, the part of you that is afraid or anxious, worried or stressed, or is throwing a tantrum because it’s not getting something it wants now. 

Our uncooperative, unruly, demanding inner child is just bits of us that we have shoved aside as unacceptable, have avoided and denied, and have never grown up.  Ask yourself, if this child was on the outside of me and I was being kind and compassionate, firm and loving, what would I do?

 You might give the child a hug, buckle her up in the back seat and continue on your way driving forward.   You might divert his attention; we are getting into the car now and going, let’s focus on the wonderful things that are ahead of us today. 

It's about parenting these bits of ourselves, loving them, nurturing them, until they are all grown up inside of us.

Key #4

Turn your inner critic into an inner coach. Notice the negative self-talk, all the things that you say to yourself, almost unconsciously, that are just not nice.  You would never talk to anyone else like that, and yet you verbally abuse and berate yourself. 

Choose to be aware of what’s going on in your mind as you drive your car and go about your day. Notice how you drag yourself down by what you tell yourself.

Why do you do such things? It’s a weird psychology. Here’s the gist of it: If you put yourself down and criticize yourself, then it won’t hurt or be as impactful when someone else does the same to you. You will be prepared.

It doesn’t make sense does it. There’s a lot of things that you and I do that don’t make any sense.  The beauty is that you chose to do it and you can choose something else now. It just takes consistent effort and practice.

It takes 28 days to create a new habit, and that doesn’t mean realize it and leave it. That means taking steps to create real change.  Saying no to the inner critic, feeling the feelings underneath what is said and loving that bit of you. It’s a cry for help and we all do it.

So, acknowledge what you said, feel the feelings that the hurtful words are covering up, love that bit of yourself, let go of it all, allow it to drop away, and choose the inner coach.  Acknowledging your feelings is powerful. Feeling never killed anyone. They are just feelings. When you acknowledge them, you take the wind out of the sales of all that old stuff, that stuff that you are now letting go.

If you heard your best friend talk to herself like this, what positive, supporting, uplifting things would you say to her. Now do this for yourself and feel how that feels. Take it on board. It’s the new you in the making!

This is all about dropping the judgment.  Imagine that your negative opinions about yourself, your situation, your circumstances are a penny in your hand. You simply open your hand and let it go.  That's how easy it is to drop the judgment if you but choose.

When you let go of the judgment, which by the way is keeping you stuck and going around in circles like a hamster on a wheel, it’s easy to feel gratitude and acceptance. It’s easy to feel more love and genuine, caring support.

Wrapping it Up

Breath work, gratitude, strong, clear, and loving boundaries and being your own inner coach are golden keys to feeling successful.   Parent yourself. Give yourself the loving care and attention that you need to transform from the inside out. 

This takes time, perseverance, determination, and effort. Consistency and constancy.  There is no magic pill to feeling successful.  It's about being the change you'd like to see in the world, creating and being on the inside what you would like to see on the outside. 

Never give up and you will succeed, one step forward at a time.  And each step forward, no matter how small, is a victory beyond measure.  Something to acknowledge and celebrate as the foundation for the new you that you are creating.