At this time of the year, our vision of success can start to narrow significantly. Our idea of success starts off big – a great year with a 4.0 GPA, leading to a great career and much happiness. When late November rolls around, it becomes focused on finishing the next assignment on time, getting all the readings done, or just surviving until the winter break!

I think it’s important to stay focused, but also to keep your idea of success in perspective. The outside world will measure you in all kinds of ways – what kind of marks you get, how much money you make, etc. etc. But what is your measure of success?

The blog Slow Leadership addresses this question:

There’s success and there’s success: the one based on external factors and subject to constant insecurity; the other internal and far more resistant to bad times.

Truly being successful requires a conscious exploration of what success means to you—creating your own quote. Unless you take the time to define success for yourself, there’s a good chance someone else is defining success for you. Is that OK?. Can you live up to something that you didn’t really choose for yourself?

You can read the whole post here. The post begins with a series of quotes defining success, all of which have little relation to each other. The idea is to come up with your own quotation for how you’ll define success in your own life.

CG