Hello! Apologies for the brief hiatus last week where there was no post. The personal life lesson I shared was actually a really important and huge one for me and I needed time to just sit with that. This week I wanted to explore the theme of slow living, which has come up in previous posts, a little further.
So I hope you have something nice nearby (tea, juice, snack…) to take the time out and read through the post. Remember:
“Raking the leaves is not simply to have a clean path to jog or walk along: raking the leaves is just to enjoy raking the leaves.”
The action - in this case, the reading - is the purpose. I hope you enjoy the moment of reading.
Defining Success
“We fail as soon as we allow others to define success for us”
This might sound like a pretty harsh quote, but it is honest. It’s so easy to think we are sure of what success is, and what it means to us. We go through life with our opinions of success or what it should be.
For example: Success means having a great career right? Or maybe it means being wealthy, or comfortable. Or being able to buy anything you want. Maybe it means having your own business, or mastering a profession, or being renowned in your profession.
The truth is, success can be a lot of different things for all of us. What’s more, what we consider “success” can even change as we grow over time.
However, I realized that for a very long time, I allowed everyone else to define what success was for me. Do you think you’ve ever done the same? Do you think you may be doing this now? We’ll come back to this.
We follow these different paths that we think equate to success and maybe we even follow “success” just because we think we have to. In the end, I had interests I didn’t pursue, and careers I never considered viable, all because I was living up to the expectations of others. And that’s ok, because most of us do this! There is so much pressure from society, or family, or even friends. And this pressure exists in so many ways.
We are told what success is through all forms of media: usually it involves money, fame, holidays, owning a variety of things, having a big house, working in powerful careers such as medicine or law, and so on.
There isn’t anything wrong with wanting or having any of those things. I would also love to have a nice house with enough room to accommodate my hobbies comfortably. But unfortunately, the problem is that society doesn’t really tell us that success can also be a small cabin in the woods, or a day spent meditating or painting.
How many times do you hear people say, “Oh, I didn’t do anything today, I just watched TV”, or “I just read a book”, or “I just played piano”…
Society sells us distractions and tells us what we should do, really from day 1. So it takes a lot of work to get through the noise and manipulation so that you can arrive within; and hear your own, personal voice, unaffected by the opinions and noise of the external world. This can be very hard to do, and for many people, they will spend their entire life, and many lifetimes thereafter, returning to learn this lesson.
Owning “Success”: Creating Our Own Definitions and Finding Our Purpose
When we stop to think about why we do the things we do, we learn some very important personal lessons. This is why it is so important to regularly ask yourself why you do what you do.
That doesn’t mean you have to change everything about your life, but the simple process of asking why can be very transformative. For example, you think you want to pursue a certain career, change jobs, or have a motivation for a business venture. Ok, why? What motivates you? Why does that motivate you? Why does that motivation matter? What is your goal? What are you trying to achieve? Why are you trying to achieve that? (and so on, this is a specific practice that I will share in another post).
These questions help us weed out what we really want against the noise of the external world.
Sometimes, it could be something far more simple than a big life choice. Maybe it’s something like getting a pet - a dog. Why do you really want a dog? Maybe you haven’t really thought about it - you just know that’s what “everyone else does”. Maybe you always wanted one as a child and your parents didn’t let you. Maybe you feel lonely. The point is, first we should ask why, and we should then continue to ask why.
Take the above simple decision of a dog: if you make the choice simply because “your parents didn’t let you”, then this is not truly a choice from within. This is still a reaction to an external circumstance. What’s worse, it is a reaction to the past. Once you keep asking yourself why, you may instead discover that actually, this choice isn’t really the right one at this time.
This practice is very important in helping us to define what success really is to us. It helps us see and understand why we are making certain choices. It is very important to have these considerations, and really question our beliefs about success. When we make choices surrounding things like:
What to study
Where to work
What job to go after
Choosing a partner, or a friend
Working very hard / long hours / toxic grind culture
If we were to make any of those choices based on reasonings we had not really thought about thoroughly, we could end up very unhappy. Many times people choose partners, for example, because they see them as “successful”. They have a “nice car”, a “successful” job, and so on. Unfortunately, not only are these decisions based on ego, but they are also based on a conditioned ego. Because the definitions of what “success” is, are completely controlled by something totally separate from that person’s own true viewpoints.
Sometimes we resist admitting what we really love because there is so much pressure to do otherwise by society.
We don’t want to be mannequins, or clones. We need to explore our own passions, what makes us happy, what really motivates us. If we have not sat long enough with ourselves to discover our own definition of “success”, it is mostly certain that the choices made will not lead to development or happiness.
What Success Means to Me - and Your Exercise of the Week
Written above, I said: I realized that for a very long time, I allowed everyone else to define what success was for me. Do you think you’ve ever done the same? Do you think you may be doing this now?
Based on the previous section, did it make you think of any choices you have made or are planning to make, where you may not have thought thoroughly about your motivation to do those things?
Do you feel that you do something now - and it can be anything at all: eating, shopping, lifestyle choices, working out, studying, work - where you may be allowing others to define what success is for you?
The practice for this week will be to ask yourself these questions, whether making a big or small decision. Trying to be mindful of the choices we make, and mindful about the reasons why we make them, will bring a lot of peace and happiness into our lives.
To finish, there is a nice zen story by Thich Nhat Hanh to consider whilst pondering over this important topic. How do you define success?
In the early years of Plum Village, I really enjoyed binding books. It was a simple method. Using a toothbrush, a small wheel, and a four or five pound fire-proof brick, I could usually bind two books a day. Before binding I would gather all the pages and arrange them numerically around several long planks of wood. Then I would walk up and down the lines, and then I’d walked all the way around, I would know that I had the correct number of pages for one signature. As I walked, I knew that I wasn’t going anywhere in particular, so I would walk slowly, gathering each page, conscious of each movement, breathing softly, conscious of each breath. I was at peace while assembling the pages, gluing them, and putting the covers on the books.
I knew I couldn’t produce as many books in a day as a professional bookbinder or machine, but I also knew that I loved my work. If you want to have a lot of money, you have to work hard and quickly, but if you live simply, you can work gently and in full awareness.
This last sentence is my definition of success. If you want to have a lot of money, you have to work hard and quickly, but if you live simply, you can work gently and in full awareness.
I much prefer a slow life, even if this means that the conventional definition of success goes out the window. Even if this means that people may consider me to lack “ambition”. The truth is, I am ambitious - but I decide to turn my energy inwards, not outwards to serve an external (flawed) system. My energy serves others (helping and teaching) and it serves me: my development, my learning, my process, my journey, my life, my great work.
By choosing to expend my energy on the pursuit of life, rather than the pursuit of what people tell you life should be, I am far happier. To me, a successful life is having as much time to myself as I want, to spend on my pursuits, with my family, and living life. So, what does success mean for you? Take a moment to think about this, and think about why too.
Love and light,
<3
Siiiiii, es difícil decisión de tomar, y entiendo perfectamente las ganas de superación y cambio, pero creo cuantos mas años cumplimos, mas nos desprendemos de COSAS y nos aferramos a personas; me crie en un ambiente muy familiar con respaldo y amor y, realmente recuerdo esos viernes de mi niñez esperando mi padre llegar con un paquete de pizza y faina, pero no era para festejar un cumpleaños o fiesta, ahora me doy cuenta y agradezco todo el amor de mis padres, porque era PARA FESTEJAR QUE ESTAMOS JUNTOS y mirábamos Batman en un televisor blanco y negro, no había de color; pero hasta hoy recuerdo esos momentos de felicidad todos juntos compartiendo algo y; digo, que crie a mis hijos de la misma manera para que disfruten de momentos lindos sin necesidad de lujos o cosas, que cada casa es un mundo y cada uno de nosotros vivimos ese mundo.
Ojalá mis hijos sigan disfrutando de momentos de unión en familia o amigos o compañeros de trabajo, aunque lo veo más difícil, pero esos momentos de unión con nuestros seres queridos no tienen precio ni color ni edad♥️🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🍓🌹