The success journey is often fraught with setbacks or other disappointments. I’m preaching to the choir, I know. With all the stylized fanfare influencers display on social media and in the movies, one can’t be blamed for questioning themselves, wondering if they’re on the right track. The constant refrain, “I’m not worthy, I’m not worthy” begins to replay like a thrumming mantra in your brain. It is easy to become disappointed, to feel like you should throw in the towel in defeat. Hey, welcome to Tuesday (or any other day of the week for that matter).

Don’t be so hard on yourself. Anything worth having is worth waiting for. Hard work results in great accomplishments so do not buy into the quick-fix, instant gratification lifestyle commercialized in the media. Success does not always come as easily as others in the limelight portray; no one likes to highlight the struggles they went through to achieve greatness. So, stay the course. Do the work. Succeed on your own terms.

Your definition of success will be different from mine, different from anyone else’s definition. We all want different things, even when we use the same words. “Rich” or “a lot of money” means different things to different people. For example, I learned (read somewhere) that “rich” is not the same thing as “wealthy”; I think the point being that being rich is new money, whereas wealthy is generational money (almost sounds like they didn’t work for it, that wealth in money passed down through the years. Hmmm.). Many people are not motivated solely by money. Quality of life is often high, or higher on the list than money. Although the saying is money can’t buy you happiness, the truth is, having money is better than not having money. But money alone won’t necessarily give you the same sense of satisfaction if you don’t have someone to share it with for example. Or if there’s no one to cheer you on at the finish line; we want our success to mean something to others, to be impactful on others such as our family, our friends or other people we care about.

So, as you can see, there are a lot of pieces to the success puzzle. You get to choose how the pieces are assembled. Just don’t give up too soon. And don’t quit after achieving just one goal. Chances are, you are a mercurial person with lots of varying interests, lots of nuances and tons of “possibility”. This means you will have multiple successes, both big and small so do not settle.  You decide and sally forth.

Please be sure to visit my YouTube Channel and check out the Morning Moxie with Larisa video on Taking the Long View On Success.