The Secret to Your Success
The secret to your success is simple.
Like most things in life, we’ve worked really hard to make it complicated.
We start out being our unique selves until someone tells us to stop being silly. “Quit dreaming and get a real job.”
The problem with their plan is that it blocks us from our unique design.
#QuoteoftheDay
The problem with their plan
Is that it blocks you
From your unique design.
– Kathryn Lang
See, the key to your success is you.
Without you, you can’t have success. And as long as you are living in the box THEY designed, you will struggle to be you.
It takes YOU to make a thing go right.
If you are going to live your ABUNDANT LIFE and fulfill your BIG DREAM goals, then you have to take the time to understand and define success. How does it look? What does it mean? What will you give? What will you give up? Until you know, you will struggle to embrace the secret of your success.
It Starts With Success
The other day, my husband and I were talking about success. We determined that success comes in increments – I succeed at the task, or the day, or the BIG DREAM goal. But aside from that, success is different for different people.
Some people look at Elon Musk and declare he’s successful. As one of the richest people in the world, that could make an argument for his success.
But other people look at Franklin Graham and declare he is a success. As a man that touched the hearts of millions of people around the world and left a multiplying legacy of Faith, it’s easy to see how someone could make an argument for his success.
Still others will look at George Strait and declare he is the epitome of success. After all he has shattered country music records and is now the record holder for the largest ticketed concert in the US. Which means, with a highly successful music career spanning thirty years, someone could definitely make an argument for his success.
But put these folks in a line up, and you might start an argument over which one truly has success – depending on how those arguing defined success.
That’s why it’s important to take the time to define your success.
What will your record-shattering accomplishment look like?
Once you know what success looks like, you need to understand how you fit into that picture.
YOU Determine Your Success
It turns out that you are unique in all the world. The way you are – unique gifts, talents and ability, along with what you believe, the experiences you’ve gathered, and the education and learning you’ve accumulated are all mushed together to create the YOUnique person that stares back at you from the mirror each day.
So, who are you?
Who . . . who . . . who . . . who . . . who?
I’ve always known that I was an encourager and a storyteller and (as long as you don’t ask my children) just a little bit funny or entertaining. I loved making people laugh while challenging them to go in a little deeper in Faith and hope.
But someone I considered more knowledgeable told me that I couldn’t build a business on those things. Forget that my first two books – one fiction and one faith-based – had sold over 30,000 copies combined.
Nope, THEY had my answer – or should I say answers because following the way THEY demanded required that I change almost everything that I was doing.
And even when I would take what they offered and then mold it into my unique journey, THEY would tell me I’m I was trying to do too much, or I was off target, or sometimes that I was just flat wrong.
It took a tornado to shake things up so much for me that I stopped deferring to what THEY had to say. I stopped asking other people for permission to do what I felt led to do. And I also quit apologizing for doing it my way.
Who are you?
What ignites your heart so much that you can’t stop talking about it?
What fuels your motivation to the point that you have to be reminded to take a break?
What are you so good at doing that you think it’s unimportant because surely everyone has it that easy?
These are just some of the questions you should ask yourself when you are trying to uncover your heartseed and find the key to unlock the secret to your success.
Your heartseed is the uniqueness that was planted in you at the beginning of time. Over the years, words from others and words of others (and sometimes our own words) begin to cover the heartseed in us. Add more stuff when you take on the expectations of others. Before long, you don’t know where you are going, what you are doing, and you definitely don’t know who YOU are. You need to discover the unique you to allow your heartseed to grow.
Rememer the you before the stuff and then slowly, methodically, and intentionally move forward from there.
A good exercise to get you back there is to remember a time in your life when you were completely without worry or limits. Write it out or share it with a mentor or trusted friend.
Get rooted again in you and you will begin to see the you that you are designed to be.
YOU + Success = the Secret to Your Success
It’s NOT complicated unless you choose to make it that way. As long as you stay in your lane and do what you feel in your heart you are designed to do and you love doing then YOU are the secret to success in that lane.
I’ve always known that I wasn’t supposed to “fall into line.” Sometimes I did things differently just to leave people wondering. Most of the time I didn’t realize it WAS different. I just did what I did.
And then I married my husband who was all about the line. Fall into it, follow it, never deviate. The fact that he and I are together is just one more check mark in the column that God has a sense of humor.
It wasn’t that my husband was born that way. He was TRAINED that way – by his mother, by his dad, by his aunt (who treated him like a son). After life flipped him on his ear, he started asking questions.
The two of us read “The Purpose Driven Life” together and at the end he made a simple statement. “That’s great. Love God. Love others. But then what?”
A few years later, we were clearing out my mom’s house after she died, and we found boxes of paintings, crafts, poetry, and unfinished short stories all piled in boxes in the back of her closest. The woman who had spent her whole like at a desk doing medical billing and accounting had a creative spirit she had boxed up. Worse than that, she had died with that spirit hidden away.
“We can’t let this keep happening.” I told my husband.
We watched too many people die with their dreams and their unique designs boxed up and packed away. We were struggling with it in our lives.
And then, the tornado threw us into a whole new level of questions.
What we’ve discovered through this desert experience is that when you know your Creator so well that you don’t doubt the Truth and you know your unique design so much that you know YOU without hesitation or need for permission, then you can do it – whatever your IT may be.
We developed the ABUNDANT LIFE PROGRAM to help others begin to unlock the power of their unique design. Not in the way we thought they should, but by helping them find the unique way that would work for their heart.
So, the challenge today is to know you so well nobody can stop you from reaching your success.
Now that you know the secret to your success, how will you live it?
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Share your thoughts, comments, and tips for how defining success prepares the way for your success.
