How do you define Success? Is success measured by happiness, contentment, or money? Do you get greater satisfaction from helping others or from gaining wealth? Would you measure your success by the fulfillment of your life’s dreams and goals? While there is nothing to say that you cannot, or should not, measure success by any or all the above, your measure of success will be determined by what you value and the prioritization and accomplishment of the things you value most. What I may define as success may differ from what you may determine as success. Therefore, it is important for us to identify our own measures of success. Unfortunately, many of us live significant portions of our lives pursuing dreams and goals that are not our own. Hence, we can appear to be successful in the eyes of many people but a failure in our own hearts.
Perhaps the greatest challenge, and the thing that requires the most discipline, is getting the dreams and goals of society and other people out of our heads and hearts and finding out what our hearts alone would measure as success. It is so much easier to pursue something that you want than what you think you should want, or what others say you should want. If we are going to discipline ourselves to be successful, we must identify two focal points, where we are now, and where we will be when we have reached the destination that we call success.
The beautiful thing about ‘destination success’ is that we can reach it every day. If we start each day being true to our mission, each day will have ‘success destinations’ to celebrate periodically throughout our day. When success is a daily rest stop on the road of life, we never have to worry about being disciplined for success because it has been woven into the routines and rituals of our journey.