Today one of our topics is our favourite quote. I read so much and I am always changing and growing so my favourite anything also changes frequently, but at the moment I have no trouble in picking this one:
A successful life is one that is loved by the person living it. Sandy C Newbigging.
I feel privileged because, as well as reading his book Mind Calm, I have, during my training, heard Sandy say this several times.
The very word ‘success’ used to be one that I recoiled from, even avoided. The difficulty being that I always paired it with the word that I saw as its opposite. Failure. And I had decided that I was a failure.
Having studied at one of the ‘best’ universities in the world, I went on to have a career that looked more like a patchwork than a shooting star. I started off as a librarian, spent some time working as a journalist and then, following my first divorce, worked for a large manufacturing company as a junior manager. When my son was little I started a business that went bankrupt after a few years. I thought I had found my niche when I retrained in the law, but due to family circumstances and health found myself freelancing part time rather than working up towards partnership.
I went back to university yet again to do a master’s but this took me in a completely unexpected direction. I thought that it might open doors to teaching, but, having written a long dissertation, I realised that the creation of a full length book was, in fact, something I could do one day.
As many people know, I have now written my first book and the second is underway. I continue to freelance in my professional role and am preparing to teach meditation as a qualified Mind Calm Meditation Coach (this is where the training with Sandy Newbigging comes in). I feel more comfortable, more myself and more fulfilled than I ever have with this life, but I have given up defining success or failure according to the jobs I am doing. In fact, I am letting go of the whole judging business when it comes to my life and the apparent need to decide between success and failure.
I do what I do. I follow my heart, my intuition and the guidance of my Higher Power. And of course if I am listening properly, those things include the guidance to look after my family and myself in a responsible way and try to avoid hurting others.
But I now understand that success is not an option. Something that might happen or might not happen. It is there all the time, always has been, just waiting to be noticed. I have always had the opportunity to love my life, to love being me and to love being alive. I can – and do – choose success every day, and then do the stuff that wants to be done and see what happens. If something appears to ‘go wrong’ or doesn’t unfold as I hoped or expected, it doesn’t make me a failure. It may be an unexpected turn in my road, but I am still a success if I love my life.
And just a word about ‘life.’ When I say I love my life I don’t mean the work I do, the house I live in, whether or not I am in a relationship, the car I drive, the things I have etc etc. Although I do love a lot of those things, I recognise that they will come and go. Choosing to make my sense of success contingent on any of them would be a precarious business. The life that I choose to love is my inner life, knowing who I am, connecting with people and everything around me, creating my days the way that only I can, and sensing a growing conscious contact with the divine. Those things can continue whatever happens with the ‘stuff’ in my life.
But the funny thing is that the more I love my inner life, and the more I focus on success, the easier it becomes to run the ‘stuff,’ the better it all seems to go, and the more it all looks like the traditional definition of success.
Do you have a favourite quote that has changed the way you see life? Please share if you do!
Like yourself, my favourite quote will frequently change…
An interesting read… Amazing what happens when you stop defining…
Yes. Stopping defining. It’s interesting you should say that as I now realise this is my second post in a few days about changing definitions. Thanks!
This really started my thought process Harriet. Sometimes we know we are in the ‘wrong’ place or situation, doing what we don’t really want to be doing but telling ourselves we are successful. I have thought about this a lot lately, what does it mean to be happy? The answer is different for everyone, so therefore success is different for everyone. Yet we are so afraid of not succeeding. I wonder then what the majority of people therefore define success as? Interesting.
My quote is “I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.” by Douglas Adams. It is how I remind myself that everything is ok, when I think I have got it ‘wrong.’
I love that quote too, Kama. And perhaps if we are afraid of success, as so many of us are when we get really honest, it’s because we have an idea of success that doesn’t fit with what successful really means for us. Thank you!
I suppose it rather depends on your definition of success, doesn’t it? If you define it as the successful completion of a task you’ve sent yourself that’s one thing, but what if success was just taking a step forward on some unseen path? What if you’re already successful and you just don’t realise it? All this stuff about success and failure, it’s just our human mind rationalising our lives. Who decides if we’re successful or a failure? We do. I’m surrendering the need to be successful at anything. I’m trying an experiment of just being me with no particular goals or need for anything to be any particular way. I have no idea how this is going to turn out, but letting go of trying to make things be one way or another is certainly more peaceful. Great post, Harriet, loved hearing a bit more about your life and how you got to where you are now. Andrea
I love that, Andrea. These days, letting go and just seeing how things turn out is actually rather rebellious, but like you it is the type of approach that seems most right to me at the moment. A lot of people I know would call it irresponsible. I think it’s faith. As long as I am not sitting around eating junk and watching trash TV all the time but doing something on the unseen path you talk about then I am going somewhere. Thank you for a great comment :-)
A poem by Raymond Carver, who died in 1988, a recovering alcoholic, continues to resonate with me.
And did you get what
You wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
And this includes, for me, being able to love and accept myself, despite what I got wrong or maybe not wrong but what was intended.
Fabulous, I love that. Thank you, Anna.
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
Eleanor Roosevelt
I love Eleanor. This is simply ONE of my favorite quotes by her.
Yes I love that one too. And one can never be reminded enough! Thank you :-)
Great post! You’ve found a good way to look at success; I don’t like the word “failure” it just makes you seem like less than, I think we should stop using that word and just call it “delayed success” :)
That’s a really good idea! Thanks for commenting :-)