Success is showing up

Be successful...show up.

How do you define success?

• Having lots of money in the bank?

• Being the go-to guru in your specialist field?

• Retiring before legal retirement age?

For me, success is all about the effort and attitude I put into my project. Little effort means not much to show for the time spent on the project. I can't regain time I spend. I can only move forward and choose to use my time to work toward my goal. If I put a ho-hum effort in to write my book each day, it's going to take me a long time to finish the book. If I arrive at the keyboard bursting with energy with the intention of getting lots of words on the screen, I know I've already succeeded. My attitude has gotten me on my way to achieve my goal.

Aiming for success is applying yourself to today's task - now, in this moment.

Some days showing up at the keyboard is difficult. It's usually because I feel distracted by random thoughts about all kinds of subjects demanding my time and wanting to be written. This includes my characters knocking on the door to come inside with me, too. To help me achieve the success on these crazy mind days, I take 30 minutes to an hour of my time to write out my thoughts and then I meditate to still the mind so that the creative process can begin. This hour is time well spent because it makes me more productive. It's better to spend an hour to clear the mind than to fight my way through the hundreds of things I'm trying to remember.

A computer works best with no bugs tripping the process and so our mind works best with fewer random thoughts.

Are you succeeding today? Have you shown up for success this week? I'd love to hear how easy or hard it was for you.

Life Begins ...

Recently, I received an email from a friend that stated life begins at 65. There are many people who believe life begins at various ages of their lives. Some say 30, 40, or 50, and others say 60. I've often wondered why they might choose these ages. It appears an important milestone or event happened around these ages that changed their life for the better: a job promotion, birth of a baby, lotto win, retirement, or seeking change in life because they have more time. They embrace that new freedom to enjoy something they've always wanted to do.

I believe life begins from the moment of conception. We're called to live every stage of our lives with joy in our hearts. Of course, life doesn't always throw good things our way all the time. There are struggles and challenges to overcome and sometimes those mountains can be mighty big and seem insurmountable. It's those life experiences that shape and develop us into the people we are today.

When we break through one of life's dilemmas we can never be the person we were before. We've had to call on our resources to tackle the problem and overcome it. We've broken through the barrier and in doing so we've added a new skill to our resource bank to call on next time when the unexpected happens. This is life. Even though we may feel life is beginning at a particular age, it's important to reflect on what got us to that point. What struggles have we had to work through to get us here?

Life doesn't begin...life means we've conquered mountains and we've developed resources to take us to the next level of life's challenges.

Never be afraid of challenges. They come at us every day. They're going to bend our mind, test our physical strength and resilience, help us understand our emotions, and mature us spiritually. Next time life throws a challenge at us, let's say "bring it on". Take a deep breath, go to our resource bank and choose the tools we've used before and sharpen them for the next lot of challenges that are sure to come our way.

Life is about living and growing in every moment of every day.

Let's live, and let's grow with each challenge, no matter how big it is.

I dare you...

Go on, climb that mountain...today.