Turn Your Life into the Greatest Success Story Ever Told
(This post is part of a unique project organized by Jonny over at www.thelifething.com. Through his efforts, a new inspirational eBook titled “SUCCESS” has just been released that consists of 30 bloggers’ personal definitions of the term ‘success’ and how to achieve it. The eBook is completely free to anyone interested and can be downloaded here: The Success eBook. In addition, most of the bloggers featured in the book have written a post this week about their thoughts on success in the hopes of creating a massive wave of inspiration around this topic! So, here’s my post…)
The day that I considered myself to be successful was the day I decided that nothing was going to stop me from achieving the craziest of my goals. At the time, my craziest of goals was to travel for as long as I was wanted without having to stop and figuring out a way to survive along the way without having to return home to take up a normal job.
I immediately knew that the difficulties and challenges would be plentiful, the nagging from family and friends to settle down unbearable and the road ahead overflowing with unknown answers to many of life’s important questions. But I still felt successful nonetheless.
At the time of this realization, I didn’t own a home. I didn’t even rent one and I had no bed to call my own. I didn’t have a business or a job and I naturally had no income. In fact, all I had was a pair of shorts, three t-shirts, one pair of sandals, a camera and just over $1000 to my name. Yet none of that mattered, because to me, success has nothing to do with any of those things.
Whether you have one backpack holding all of your possessions or you divide your time between three mansions, a castle and two yachts, the measurement of your success should be separate from the monetary value or sheer number of your material possessions. Of course, we hear this all the time, but I find it to be so undebatably true that an extra mention certainly can’t hurt. As I wrote in the Success eBook I mentioned above, “Success is living in active pursuit of what you truly want in life, not what others want for you.”
Can you think of anything more fulfilling than living the life of your dreams? Is there any greater success story than that? That’s why we have dreams. They represent our loftiest goals and ideals for what we want to see happen during our time on this planet. Some people claim that without unachievable dreams, we’ll lose our motivation and drive to work hard in life, but I disagree.
I think we all have two distinct choices:
1. Consider our dreams to be unachievable and give up before even attempting to reach them.
OR
2. Live out our dreams, then create new ones, and live out those as well (and repeating this cycle over and over again).
Easier said than done, I know that. But it’s nowhere close to being impossible. And if something isn’t impossible (very few things are truly impossible anyway), then logically speaking, that means it is POSSIBLE!
So if achieving the greatest success imaginable is possible, why would we spend our lives in pursuit of anything else?
I once envisioned living a life involving constant world travel. And I somehow achieved it. Now I dream of using these years of travel to promote the benefits of global citizenship. And I plan on reaching that goal as well.
If I can achieve my definition of success, then anyone can do the same. I’m just a normal guy, having grown up in a suburb of Boston, receiving a normal education and enduring the same pressures as everyone to conform to the traditional path of life. But here I am now, living one block from a white-sand beach in Mexico, learning Spanish, interacting with new people, connecting with other global citizens through this website, earning income through unique business ventures and regretting not one minute of this adventure.
Now again, this was my dream, my version of ultimate success. It’s obviously not everybody’s goal. But whatever is your true goal, it can be attained.
One of the most common reactions I hear from other people who have decided to pursue their goals and end up finding personal success is: “That was much easier than I thought.” Of course, they undoubtedly put in a lot of blood, sweat and tears and it might have taken several years or more to achieve what they wanted. But seriously, isn’t a little blood and sweat or two years of struggle worth the result of living a life you once thought would remain a fantasy inside your head forever?
If you’re still not convinced, have a quick look at what all 30 inspirational lifestyle designers, nomads, and global citizens have to say: The Success eBook. It’s well worth the read and again, it’s absolutely free to anyone interested!
And any efforts to share this post and the link to the eBook will be greatly appreciated as our goal is to get this eBook into the hands of 50,000 people worldwide. Perhaps this book will provide that final push of motivation that will lead someone to a more fulfilling life!
What’s your idea of success? Please share your unique definition below!
