{"id":771,"date":"2023-12-12T05:31:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-12T05:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/samgembel.com\/blog\/?p=771"},"modified":"2023-12-12T10:56:17","modified_gmt":"2023-12-12T10:56:17","slug":"im-successful-now-what","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/samgembel.com\/blog\/im-successful-now-what\/","title":{"rendered":"I’m Successful. Now What?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cDefine success on your own terms, achieve it by your own rules, and build a life you\u2019re proud to live.\u201d <\/em>\u2015 Anne Sweeney<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What does it mean to be successful? What does it look like? Many of us have a wrong picture of success. Frankly, the majority of people misunderstand it. Some people are even afraid of it. They wrongly equate it with achievement of some sort, with arriving at a destination. The continual search for happiness is one of the main reasons that so many people are miserable. Look around us – Sadly, there is misery everywhere in this world. If you make “just being happy” your goal, you are almost certainly destined to fail. You will be on a continual roller coaster, changing from \u201csuccessful\u201d to \u201cunsuccessful\u201d with every single mood change or circumstance you face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Life is uncertain and emotions just aren\u2019t stable. Happiness simply cannot be relied upon as a measure of success. Think back to when you were a kid. Chances are that there was a time when you wanted something really bad, and you believed that if you possessed that thing, it would make a significant difference in your life. When I was 10 years old, for me it was a red Huffy bike from Kmart. (where are all my Kmart kid leaders at?) Back then, the thing to do was to ride around on our bikes everywhere! But I was riding an old bike that me and my dad found in the trash and fixed up. I never had a new bike. But I figured that if I had that new bike that I saw every time we went to Kmart, I\u2019d have it made and be “the cool kid” in the neighborhood I grew up in. I\u2019d have the newest, fastest, best-looking bike among all my friends. For my birthday that year, I got my wish. I loved that bike. But about a month after I got it, that sucker got stolen from me. Sadly, by a kid I thought was my friend! If I had let that new bike determine my success with my neighborhood buddies, I’d be in for a rough go at it moving forward. As getting another new bike would never be in the cards ever again for the remainder of my childhood. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That same process of achievement has repeated itself over my entire life, all the way to today at 43 years old.. I have found that success didn\u2019t come as the result of possessing something I\u2019d wanted. If I defined success as each time we purchase a shiny new truck, the day that truck got it’s first scratch in it while out working, I might not let anybody else ever drive a new truck again! Or if success was defined because we hired a new employee, if ever that team member wasn’t working out and had to be promoted to another company, I could get a skewed mindset of how much “employees are the worst. I’m never hiring anybody again”! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Possessions are at best simply a temporary fix. True joy comes from within ourselves. Success is found when we are truly happy in the moment with where we are at in our journey today. Then, we build off that foundation to make tomorrow even better. There is no “arrival point”. Success cannot be attained or measured that way. Success can be considered “achieved” simply by just hitting your goals. By doing what you say you’re going to do. If you tell yourself you want to lose some weight and you accomplish it, you are successful. If you set out to create a morning routine and get up early, and you stick to it… Congrats! If you tell yourself you want to grow your business to a certain revenue point, and you hit it, congrats, you are a success. If you tell yourself you want to grow your ministry to see 100, or 500 people on a given Sunday, and you are seeing what you wanted to accomplish, you are a success. Or if getting that new truck is your definition of success, great. All of these accomplishments are great, just don’t stay there. Keep pushing and growing. Don’t over-celebrate. What I am getting at is this.. Things don’t have to be a certain size or thing to be considered a success. There doesn’t have to be some sort of financial gain to be a success. We get that skewed mindset of what success looks like because we think that it is found when other people tell us we are there! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As you are working daily to continuously grow yourself, be and live in the midst of the process. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Success opportunities are like buses, there\u2019s always another one coming. The door isn\u2019t always open, but sometimes it\u2019s ajar a bit or the key is on the floor. All you must do is pick it up and turn the lock. Success ebbs and flows. Successful people are not gifted; they just work hard, then succeed on purpose because of a purpose. You see, success isn\u2019t a list of goals to be checked off one after another. It\u2019s not reaching a destination. Success is simply a life journey of Continuous Improvement. If you are working hard today for a better tomorrow, congratulations. You are a success story! And I’m a firm believer that when you define success as growing daily, your best days are yet to come!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cDefine success on your own terms, achieve it by your own rules, and build a life you\u2019re proud to live.\u201d \u2015 Anne Sweeney What does it mean to be successful? What does it look like? Many of us have a wrong picture of success. Frankly, the majority of people misunderstand it. Some people are even … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":780,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,3,5,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gratitude","category-inspiration","category-motivational","category-personal-growth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/samgembel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/samgembel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/samgembel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samgembel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samgembel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=771"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/samgembel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":779,"href":"https:\/\/samgembel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771\/revisions\/779"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samgembel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/samgembel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samgembel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samgembel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}