It's June 2017 and a friend has put a question up on Facebook. What's your definition of success? I start typing an answer, stop, delete it and start again.
The funny thing is, I've answered this one before. A few years ago another friend quoted me in her book about success. I gave her a nice, polished definition about freedom, living life on your own terms and helping other people do the same. I still agree with every word. It just isn't what I'd say today.
Peace of mind
These days my answer is a lot shorter. Success is peace of mind.
Being comfortable in my own skin. Lying down at night without an argument running round my head. Everything else is a bonus.
And to get there, you have to be honest with yourself about who you really are. That's something I was terrible at for a long time.
Trying to be someone else
I lived with depression for more than ten years. Looking back, I think the biggest problem was that I wasn't comfortable being me. I'm not sure I even knew who me was.
I was so busy trying to be whoever I thought you wanted me to be that I lost track of what I believed and what mattered to me. You can't have peace of mind when you don't know who you are. There's nothing for the peace to settle on.
Being honest with yourself means seeing things as they are. Not worse than they are, which was always my speciality. And not better than they are either.
Test what you believe
One thing that helped me was testing the things I believed about myself.
We all carry beliefs we've never checked. Everyone thinks I'm useless. Nobody would help me if I asked. The good news is you only need one example to knock one down. Find one person who rates you and "everyone thinks I'm useless" falls apart. Find one person who'd help and the other one goes too.
When a belief turns out to be false, swap it for one that's true and more useful. And if the voice in your head is the one doing the damage, ask yourself would you talk to a friend like that?
Where I've landed
Nine years later my answer hasn't changed. Money and titles are nice to have. They've never given me peace of mind on their own, and nothing I've bought has filled the gap when I wasn't right inside. I wrote more about how I found my way there in The road to peace begins within.
Write your own definition of success in one sentence, without the words money, job or house. Then look back at this week and ask whether the way you spent it moved you towards it.
First published June 2017.
