I recently had the honor of participating in a round-table discussion with Jack Canfield, author of The Success Principles along with 9 other women who own and run successful businesses as coaches and mentors. We had discussion around how to define success. With the help of Mr. Canfield, we determined that success is defined as a sense of fulfillment in living out our life’s purpose.
Too often we equate success with winning. Winning most often connotes competition. I’m here to shake that up and point us back to this concept of fulfillment and living your purpose for being here on this planet.
Simple success is achieved when we feel fulfilled. When we are in alignment with our ultimate goal.
Part of the work we did with Jack Canfield was to work through a 4 step process of identifying what our life’s purpose is. Let’s walk through it now.
- Identify two qualities that are of value to you and others that you naturally bring to your life and work. For me I chose intuition and attentiveness.
- Next name two actions (ending in “ing”) you love to do that express the above two word. Mine were listening and teaching.
- Now, consider if the world were working perfectly what would it be like? How would people be interacting? Write two phrases or sentences. Mine was, People will get along harmoniously and will harmonize with nature.
- Plug in the above 3 into the following statement formula:
My life’s purpose is to use my ___________ and my ________________ to __________ and to ____________ in order to _______________________.
For example, here is mine: My life’s purpose is to use my intuition and attentiveness through listening and teaching others in order to help people experience harmony with self, others and all of nature.
Once you’ve identified what your life’s purpose is you can begin to achieve simple success because you now are very clear as to what your ultimate goal is for your time here on Earth. Simple success can be experienced on a daily basis when the choices you make in your business and relationships are in line with your life’s purpose because you will have a sense of fulfillment.
Success in terms of earning money or achieving awards is an off-shoot that naturally often follows when you are in alignment with fulfilling your life’s purpose. We must first be very clear about who we are at essence and what we bring to this life. Then, every day we can consciously make choices that align with that.
“Follow your bliss.
If you do follow your bliss,
you put yourself on a kind of track
that has been there all the while waiting for you,
and the life you ought to be living
is the one you are living.
When you can see that,
you begin to meet people
who are in the field of your bliss,
and they open the doors to you.
I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid,
and doors will open
where you didn’t know they were going to be.
If you follow your bliss,
doors will open for you that wouldn’t have opened for anyone else.”
― Joseph Campbell
