The Measure of Success

How do you measure success? How have I measured it? What is the definition of successful? Are you successful because you visited every country in the world, and have a trove of treasures to show for it? Have you succeeded by climbing the corporate ladder and securing your place on the throne at the top? Did you find success in paying all of your debts and saving thousands or millions of dollars? Perhaps your success is shown in the quality of things you own... a large house, luxury vehicles, genuine leather sofas, etc...

I won't lie... I thought success was a collaboration of all of the above. Working hard and acquiring. Acquiring things, and people, and experiences. I'm an American - more is better right? More room, more choice, more freedom, more money, more food, more fun! Except, now I find myself in between a rock and a hard place... where I've been conditioned to want MORE, but I don't have the money to support that desire. My husband makes just enough to keep us living comfortably. Now, I must change my definition of success. So I sit here and wonder how, and what... what is success?

As I close my eyes, and breathe... I find that nowhere in the previously mentioned measures, was HAPPINESS mentioned. You have to work to afford to travel. You have to work to pay debts. You have to work to save money, and to spend it. Unless you're lucky enough to win the lottery... but even then - why does success have to revolve around money? No... I'm trying hard to focus my energies on happiness... measuring my success by the peace in my heart... diminishing stress in my life. Keeping things in order, and helping my children to define and achieve their own measures of success.

Every day is a clean slate for me. Success is when I wake up and I'm happy, not too tired. Success is that "perfect" day when nothing goes wrong. When I have all the patience in the world for the kids... when I make all the beds, the laundry is done, and the dishes are cleaned. Success is 230pm, when the baby that I keep goes home to her mother, and I can focus on the end of my day. It's being on time to soccer practice, not burning dinner, walking the dog, bathing the kids and getting them to bed on time before school. Success is found in love... and in laughter... and in light... and it's all around me, every day - no matter what type of couch I sit on, where I go for summer vacation, or what clothes I have picked out to wear tomorrow.

Now... to remind myself of this EVERY day... especially when I'm feeling less than stellar for having quit the military and being stuck at home on the "not so successful" days, surrounded by heathens and wishing I was in Iraq for 6 months instead. :P (although, those days are few and far between.)

The best feeling... is looking around at what I do have, the places that I have been, and the family that surrounds me now - knowing that no matter what... from this day forward... I am successful.