What Does Success Mean to You?

What is success? Does it matter if others think you are successful, or is it defined within you? When you wake up in the morning and feel happy, is that success? If you are content with your profession, your relationships, or your finances, is that success?

Motivator, Tony Robbins, said “To be great, you have to want greatness.” I love this quote because it is so true. If you think someone is going to make the effort for you, or hand you a platter of greatness from which you can graze, you are mistaken. Wanting it is the first step. Attaining it is the next. You can substitute this phrase with a few other words, as well. To be positive, you have to want to be positive. Or, to be successful, you have to want success. Each requires a true desire before they can happen.

Within each of these words, success, greatness, and positivity, exists different meanings because every person creates his or her own definitions. How others see you is important. Your professional and personal image should be good. More importantly is how you see yourself. How does your definition of success feel and what does it look like?

In marital arts, students establish their own definition for why they are training. This can include self-defense, fitness, art, fighting, empowerment, or self-improvement. Martial artists have their own goals to achieve. For many, a black belt is the result they want. First, they have the desire to be a martial artist, then they take it to the next level by learning and practicing. If they stick with it and use perseverance and patience, their effort will pay off. The black belt is symbolic of all of their work and effort, but it is not the end. This is the point when the journey begins.

Success, personal greatness, and positivity, like earning a black belt, all require an effort. Sometimes it takes a long time before you see results. It took me five years to earn my black belt, yet, I did not give up. I tried because I wanted to succeed. It was a goal because it was important to me. I was willing to wait for success, if it could wait for me.

Martial arts are just one of many endeavors I have tried in my life that took time and effort. In 2014-2015, I wrote several poems a day, five days a week, to send to a greeting card company in the hopes of getting published. It was a lofty goal, but you should not shy away from lofty goals or limit yourself if there is something you want to achieve. You are free to consider all the things that you want for your life.

For those couple of years, I diligently wrote the poems. On occasion the greeting card company would send me a contract to sign which moved it forward in the publishing phase for a market review. However, in the end, my poems were always denied. The last rejection came a couple of years ago, and after sending hundreds of poems in, I finally put my pen down and let it go.

Nearly two and a half years later, while sitting on my bed and talking to my husband about the direction and path of my life, I looked down at my laptop to see a surprising e-mail. It was the greeting card company to which I sent the hundreds of poems years earlier. As I read on, I was stunned to find out that they wanted to purchase and publish two of my poems that they had rejected nearly two years ago.

Amazingly, my goal came to fruition. I had no idea how or when or why, but I do know that if I had not had the true desire first and worked toward attaining it, that it would have never happened.

It is your time to figure out what you really want. Pick one thing that has always been of interest. Fly a plane, take a dance class, learn a martial art, fix a relationship, go sky diving, start a small business, share your insights, or try a new hobby. Results in life are never guaranteed, but just taking an action toward them significantly increases your chance for success. Let me state it this way. If you never try, you will definitely never succeed.