Successful Living
Despite what society would like you to believe, you already know intuitively, that real success isn’t measured by what you own, but rather, by who you are. Ultimately it is a real sense of contentment in all the areas of your life that is the true measure of, what I’d like to describe as, ‘successful living’. It’s a new ‘360 degree’ way of viewing success, not merely by the number of zero’s in your Swiss bank account, or your relative position in high society, but rather about you feeling happy and successful in every part of you life, from your career and finances through to your health and relationships. Where to start?
Exercise 1. The Simple Life Audit
Grab a piece of paper, notebook, PDA and rate your happiness and satisfaction in the following categories from 1 to 10, where 1 is seriously unhappy and 10 is ecstatic. What number would describe how content you are with these areas of your life? Health & Fitness, Career, Relationship, Home, Friends and Social Life, Meaning and Purpose, Creativity Family, Leisure, Finances.
What you’ll probably find is that in some areas of your life you are quite satisfied and in other not happy at all. But if you want to live more successful in all areas of your life; finically, physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually, then some things have to practically change.
Those areas which scored lowest are the ones that need the most improvement and fast! How are you going to change those things in your life? Those things that you haven’t changed or done anything about in years?
How are you going to readjust and create that feeling of success in areas of our lives that you’ve previously given little or no attention to, and honestly don’t feel like a success? And why if it’s so plainly obvious that those areas of your life needed change, why haven’t you succeeded at improving it, or achieving your goals already?
The reason is, that we’re all creatures of habit, most of us like things to be familiar and stay the same, even if that means they aren’t always good for us. Part of the problem is that we often strongly identify our lifestyle habits with our personality and that we secretly addicted to who we believe we are, and don’t really want to change.
On some level, many of us actually enjoy moaning and complaining about our lives, more than we think might enjoy the challenge of making our lives significantly better. Change means risking who we are, for who we might become.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed but we always justify everything we do; most of the time we believe that we’re always right. Change is difficult and often uncomfortable, not because changing our lifestyle is painful, but rather because it means doing something, that no one likes to do, and that is; admitting that we might be wrong or have gone wrong somewhere along the path.
Exercise 2. The Simple But Difficult Questions
Start to be really honest with yourself, spend some time looking within, and begin to ask yourself the really important and difficult questions about your life.
Do I really want to be happy? Do I want to live successfully as a complete human being? Do I really want to live my life to the full?
If you’re finding this line of thought difficult, try this out for size:
What would you do if you were told that you only had twelve months to live?
What would your priorities be? How would you want to live your life differently? How would you want to be remembered? Who would you want to become? Would you still do your job? Would you still be polite to people who really annoy? Would you care what people thought?
Or would you find out what your real priorities and life goals are?
Hopefully after all this introspection there are two things you know;
1. That you want to be happy and live successfully
2. That you’ve got some idea about who and where you want to be in the not too distant future.
But when you are moving forwards towards a more positive future we often need to jump, to leap from the place we are to where we want to be, and you can do this easily by having a plan.
Exercise 3. The Simple Five Year Plan
The idea behind a life-plan is to help you find out where it is you want to be heading in your life, but more importantly, it can help you take simple and practical steps towards making your dreams come true.
Where would you like to be, in five years time? Can you imagine yourself, being significantly healthier and wealthier? Can you see yourself becoming a generally happier, calmer and more relaxed individual? Or can you sense the excitement of being even more successful in all areas of your life?
It doesn’t have to be a very detail plan, just a sketch, an outline, I find it works best if you plan backwards.
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Now you can begin to run towards your future – even though this plan may change, at least you’ve now got a much clearer idea and vision of where you are going.
Exercise 4. Feel The Future Now
There is one really important component to realising your goals and living successfully and that is that it’s got to start doing it now. Not just because if you don’t start to make even a small change in your lifestyle now, you probably never will. And not just because, if you don’t start now, you’ll always be putting off tomorrow until tomorrow, and when tomorrow comes, there’s always another tomorrow.
But if you want these dreams to come true (and they really can) then to start to live as if they are already true now, start to feel the benefits of that that future success now.
