Measuring Success

Do two halves really make a whole?  When one and one are added are they really two or just one and the same?  When we consider having the same opinion is it really the same?  When you introduce a third to the two does that opinion stay the same or change?

Life seems to be much to do with numbers.  How many likes, how many followers, how much money you make, how many cars you own.  Why do we like to measure things like we do?  Is anything that easily measured?

Is success really something that can be measured or is it something that is internal to each of us?  When we read books on how to become more successful is it really that easy to follow certain steps to satisfy that internal need or desire to be successful?

I have spent much of my life feeling like I was not successful.  I remember the tears flowing when my husband asked me why I did not think I was successful and the realization that as much as I wanted to be successful I could not come up with reason why I was not.  So where does that put me on the spectrum of measuring my success?  Am I in that strange space somewhere between success and failure?  That commonplace of just being?  Is that enough?

I think we spend much of our time trying to gain happiness but rarely spend time determining what it is that would make us happy.  Perhaps the exercise would be more fruitful if we put more thought into what success would be like for us individually.

For me my happiness is freedom.  Freedom to be who I am meant to be.  There is a difference between what I do and who I am.  I have been trapped in the walls of Corporate USA for several decades now and I am relatively sure I do not fit in.    When I hear the corporate culture speak of work/life balance I think, “Is it not all my life?”  Why not just strive to be who I am and balance what makes me happy and what I am required to do to survive?

There are times we are the wrong piece to the puzzle but that does not mean we do not fit in the bigger picture.  Ah, puzzle pieces, the group that makes up a whole or is it the singles making up the many.  The many that are forced to be one ultimately have a special place all their own that complete the whole.

My advice?  Find what makes you happy.  Balance time spent doing those things and the things that are required in life.  You never know, you might even find a way to make being happy your life and not have to try to balance anything at all.  Just find where you fit in the big puzzle and you can settle in for a happy healthy road ahead.