There's more to life than finding the perfect car, but finding the perfect car can help you get the most out of life, like the SUV that handles everything from drop-off to off-road, and the car that hulls groceries and hockey teams, or the van that's gone from just practical to practically family. Whatever you want, wherever you're going, start your search at autotrader.ca, Canada's This is Optimal Living Daily Episode 1789, what does success mean, and when? By Greg Audino of GregAudino.com, and I'm just a molecular personal narrator reading to you every day, including holidays, or even on Election Day, which is today, here in the US. Please do vote if you're able.
It's a very tense election this year, this strange, strange year, although it's always a bit tense, but this year is all around bizarre, and I'm recording this a bit ahead of time for my own sanity, so I have no idea how it's going, all I know is that it will be crazy, so let's calm those anxieties focus somewhere else and start optimizing your life. What does success mean, and when? By Greg Audino of GregAudino.com What does success mean? The big question on so many people's minds is, am I successful?
Am I doing well, or am I currently blowing this opportunity at life? Oh boy, most would say that the general consensus of what success is now is wildly different than what it used to be. There are fewer and fewer people content with working trade jobs because only doctors, lawyers, and famous people are actually successful. There are fewer and fewer people getting married because commitment is not as fashionable as being a new person every weekend.
There are fewer and fewer people happy to just watch a sunset because if you aren't taking a picture of it so you can put it on Instagram and build your following, then what's the point? Success, however, has been and always will be the same thing, and that's the fulfillment of your values. So what's shifting is not success, but values. Certain aspects of life and career are being celebrated now that weren't celebrated before, and the impression that said celebration leaves on us is causing us to reflect on how we measure up within that area.
People with fame are getting more attention, so we start to ask, well, how many people are following me and care about what I do? Is my life cool enough? Demptiness, however, that often catches up to those that do end up making millions of dollars or acquiring millions of fans is a reflection of the fact their true values and the real blueprint they have of their life are not being met with entirety. That said, the first ingredient necessary to defining success is to define it for yourself rather than to let it be defined by others.
What does success look like for you, and how can you be successful within your own personal values which are the real contributors of meaning into your life? We're all embarking on our own paths within our relationships, careers, bodies, spirituality, the list goes on. It's important to devote ourselves to each path in such a way that reflects how much we care about it, not how much others care about it. One thing to be aware of is that other people's devotion can take effect in two forms.
The first is what your group tells you directly, so being told directly by your best friend that something is wrong if you aren't married by 30. The second is what you assume your group is thinking, so assuming that your friends who are all married by 30 think you failed because you're 30 and aren't married. But the second doesn't stop there. The second can expand from how you feel you're fitting in with your friends and family to how you feel you're fitting in with your town, how you're fitting in with your age bracket, how you're fitting in with your ethnicity, how you're fitting in with this time period, how you're fitting in with the whole world.
So mapping out the road to success really begins with you defining it for yourself. Buyer beware that in identifying your version of success, you will certainly find a degree of influence from your environment. The trick is to make sure it's a healthy degree. For example, if you want to get your master's degree and everyone else in your family happens to have one, that's all right, but if you're getting your master's because everyone else in your family has one, that could be unhealthy and not an accurate reflection of what you really want.
Once you've sorted this out and you've gotten in touch with what your values are and what it means to you to be successful within them, try breaking that success down into two subcategories, practicality and pride. If you're deeply passionate about being a musician, for example, assessing success from a practical standpoint would mean asking yourself how much money you need to attain from your music career. Does success mean just a few gigs a year, doesn't mean paying the bills, doesn't mean more money than you've ever dreamed of, what it means to you specifically will help you create a detailed metric for yourself. Same goes for the subcategory of pride.
Does success within the realm of pride mean committing to the daily struggle involved? Does it mean writing your own lyrics? Does it mean sticking to one genre? Does it mean performing on stage with the onsite?
It's different for everyone. So once you've gotten clear about how you and only you view success within any given endeavor, you'll likely feel a confident rush of momentum and be excited to crack on. Fantastic. But it's important to remember here that for as much time goes by, change and influence will continue to be a factor in your life, thus either strengthening or weakening this metric of success that you've laid out.
For this reason, it's essential to keep track of your journey and continually check in with yourself. Check in with yourself about how you're feeling and how your actions have changed or stayed the same. It's only by doing this that you'll be able to gauge your true level of interest in any of your endeavors. Say your original metric for success as a musician was to just create a reliable country band with your friends and play in local bars once a month.
Great. Sounds like someone who also values their friendships, too. Fast forward 10 years, you've become a smashing success, left your friends for more talented replacements and are pulling your hair out because you're not headlining stagecoach this year. Has the metric changed?
Yes. Is it healthy? Maybe. Maybe your passion has just grown and you're still in touch with your friends and the only reason you're no longer playing with them is because they decided they have different interests.
But maybe you fired your friends and the big reason you're not headlining stagecoach is because you want to stick it up there and prove to them and everyone that you're the best and you don't need them. You need to read, showmanship, and insatiability. It's safe to say in a scenario like this that your metric has changed severely as a result of the fact that the music itself is no longer enough for you. Exterior changes and influences have altered your actions, thus damaging and dislodging original sense of value not only with music but also with your friends and most likely a few other areas of life.
No matter where you are in the journey of the musician, the one question you can always come back to is indeed, what does success mean? You'll answer it from wherever you are at that point, but perhaps the more revealing answer to pay attention to is not just what it means, but how the very nature of asking yourself this question makes you feel. Examining the nature of success is something we do constantly and for many, it's a painful process. If the very question is painful and disorienting, it likely means you're unhappy with where you are, unsatisfied, and therefore at risk for arriving at the part of the musician story we don't like with varying degrees of what you have to show for it.
If this is the case, reassess your true values and whether or not your actions are aligned with them. Chances are they aren't, but there's always a chance to hit the reset button. You just listen to the post titled, What Does Success Mean and When? I'm constantly thinking about how to optimize my health, what supplements to take, hours of sleep, what my diet should focus on.
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So if you want to hear his voice, you can check those out and now somewhat unrelated, it is Election Day here in the US and I'd like to encourage you to vote if you're listening in the morning and either forgot or figure you might not, and if you're here in the United States, of course. Some consider it a duty, others more of a choice, so if you're on the choice side and choosing to let this one go, I'd like to encourage you to rethink it and weigh the downsides because I don't think there are too many. The way I like to think about most decisions like these are, if everyone thought the same way I did, would the world be a better place? Or in other words, if everyone made this decision, would the world be a better place?
And I think not voting would probably be chaos if everyone did that, basically, if no one voted for anything, we'd have a big problem here. And I know that's an idealistic way of looking at it, but it's a simple way to see that maybe we should try to do what really is best for the country, us, our families, and put that vote in. Although chances are good that you've already voted, so this could be completely unnecessary, but in case you haven't, please consider a little late is better than never. If you're one who's stressed out over this, no matter what happens, we'll pull through it, we always do.
So have a great day today and I'll be back tomorrow, as usual, with no references to the election and where you're optimal life, and wait.