Most of us have an idea about what success means to us, and we have a mental vision of what it will look like when it arrives in our lives. We might finally get the career recognition weve been working so hard for, earn a lot of money, find the man or woman of our dreams, start a family, purchase our own home, buy the sports car weve wanted since we were a teenager, or reach any number of other personal accomplishments. Is this success? For some of us, it might be. Perhaps you have a different vision of what success means to you.
Regardless of your personal definition of success, you likely have one thing in common with the rest of us: you are still seeking the level of success you want to attain. Maybe youve had success in certain areas, but not in others. Your career might be going great, but your relationships are lacking. Or youve met the love of your life, but you just cant seem to earn the amount of money that would make you happy. Or everything else is great but you cant seem to lose those last 20 pounds and get into better shape.
Its a maddening position to be in, especially if you dont understand why its happening. You may think youre doing everything right, but circumstances just wont bend to your will. You constantly run into obstacles, sabotage your own efforts, berate yourself for your failures,- and the struggle continues.
This struggle continues because of one reason, and one reason only: you are focusing your energy and effort in the wrong direction!
In this modern age, we have the misguided notion that success is some elusive quality out there that we need to hunt down and capture. We believe that if we say the right things, do the right things, take exactly the right steps, success will fly right into our little butterfly net and we can pin it down on a sheet of cardboard and hang it proudly on our wall.
We cant capture success, nor can we buy it, stumble across it, or fall into it. We can only create it, from the inside out. And the only way to create it is by changing our thoughts and habits. What do thoughts have to do with anything? Everything! What we expect to see, we see. What we expect to have in our lives, we have. What we focus on the most, expands.
If your life isnt what you want it to be, your thoughts have not been in alignment with it. This can be a tricky concept to understand, but the most important point to get is that its a cumulative process.
Think of a scale. If you place a grain of sand in one of the trays, it probably wont make much difference to the balance of the scale. But if you add another grain, and another, and another, before long the scale will begin to tilt in that direction. Your thoughts work in much the same way, and if you have enough of one particular type of thought, it will affect your quality of life.
This may sound bad, but its actually a good thing! If we can create imbalance and lack with our thoughts and habits, we can also create abundance and success. Its all within our control.