Right Now. Wherever You Are.
While reading The Science of Getting Rich this morning I stumbled upon this quote:
“Success in life is becoming what you want to be.”
I suddenly realized: “Heck, I’m a success!”
I became what I wanted to be. I’m a writer. What is more, I beat the odds. Eighty percent of self‑published authors don’t even earn $1,000 a year. In 2015, there were several different months when I earned over $1,000.
The problem with becoming something, is that it never ends
Now I want to focus on becoming a full‑time author. To achieve this, I must scale my publishing venture two to five times. It’s happening, but very slowly.
Well, my mind tells me it is ‘slow’. By any external metric, my progress is commendably fast. Three years ago I hadn’t even dreamed I would become a writer. I only wrote on a couple of online forums (one about a computer game and one about a collectable card game). I had only ‘published’ one thing previously: my master’s thesis.
But in pursuing a new goal (full-time author) I forget about who I have already become (an author), and how far I have already moved (top 20%).
I now take for granted that any new book will sell 100 copies during the first day of its launch. I take for granted that I’m a contributor to GoodMenProject, a site which has millions of visits a month. The last article I had published there was shared over 1,000 times.
I’m guilty of not appreciating these wins sufficiently
You face similar challenges. Life is not static. You grow, you progress, you expand beyond your old limits.
You once were a baby who needed constant care; then a kid who needed to learn a load of basic human skills; and for a few years you were an adolescent who thought he had it all figured out.
Now you are an adult, and I bet you don’t appreciate enough how much you have changed and grown.
Cherish your small successes
If you are like most people, your income now is much higher than your salary right after school.
You are a success; you are just blind to that fact. Your vision is focused on the future, so you don’t notice the present.
Merely by living you are successful, in one sense. Some of your peers didn’t make it as far as you have. I was in a cemetery with my parents at their home village this weekend. They hadn’t been there for several years. With surprise, they discovered a few acquaintances’ graves. Those had been people they thought were in good health and doing well.
Being alive is just the first of your many accomplishments
You probably finished school, high school or even university. Not everybody did. Go back to the date of the graduation or final exams. You’ve made it! I know that when you have many years of adult years behind you, the fact you, long ago, passed these exams, may seem like small potatoes. But when you were a teenager, facing them for the first time, they looked ominous, didn’t they? And yet you made it through.
If you enjoy a reasonable good health, you are a winner. So many people nowadays neglect their health and physical shape. They just don’t pay attention to their food, sleep patterns, or don’t move enough and end up overweight or with diabetes.
If you have job right now, it means you are good enough that your employer wants to keep you. If you aren’t working right now, but have some employment experience, you are ahead of those poor kids who have just finished college and are helplessly trying to find their place in the workforce.
You are a success
If you have family, and are still with the spouse you love and married, the one you had kids with, then you’re a success there too. Many people give up on their marriages too early. And others are horrified by the thought of bringing kids into ‘this terrible world’.
If you’ve not created a family with others, the fact does not make you a failure. There are many ways to be successful. You will have contributed to our society in a different manner.
Every step of your life journey has been a step to success. And whether you’ve been on the road a long time, or just a few years, you’ve learned a lot on the way. You’ve experienced a lot. You’ve created. You’ve given your sweat, blood and tears. You’ve enriched others.
Every time you’ve done something you wanted to do, you’ve become more of a success.
You already are a success. Cling to this thought when the going gets tough.
Originally published at www.expandbeyondyourself.com on August 27, 2015.
Originally published at medium.com