I believe you can have it all. Great family, successful career, happy relationship, strong health, and financial freedom. In fact, I believe that success in one area of your life drives personal success in the other, and with the right strategies for personal success, it is not about sacrifice; it is about abundance.
For the first thirty-six years of my life, I did not understand that at all. In fact, for those years, true success and productivity eluded me. Sure, by society's standards, I was successful because I had a great career, owned my home, and had a nice nest egg for my future.
But the truth was, I was far from successful and far from productive. I was always distracted, always pulled away from what I needed to focus on by the distractions in my personal life – my family, my marriage, and my health. Let’s just say none were in good shape. And because those areas were lacking, I now know I could never achieve the level of success I was capable of financially or professionally.
The First Step to Drive Personal Success
So, what changed? Well, nothing, almost nothing. My family was still struggling with addiction and dysfunction and working hard to continue to pull me into all the drama. My husband was still fighting his own battles (and losing) with addiction, still unable to work and barely able to function on a daily basis, and I still found myself with my own obsession with sugar and carbohydrates, trying to numb the pain and packing on the pounds.
My point, none of the circumstances that I felt were preventing me from being successful changed. The only thing that changed was me.
Through an unusual turn of events, I will save for another blog, I realized that the only person preventing me from being successful was me. Sure, my life wasn’t fair. I mean, why did I have to live in a family where addiction ran rampant, where bailing people out of jail was a typical Friday night, and watching loved ones lose their lives too young happened more often than anyone should experience? It certainly wasn’t fair. However, by a lucky twist of fate, I discovered that while the hand I had been dealt was not fair, I did have the power to change it.
And with that discovery, I realized the only things I could control in my life were the choices I made and the challenges I owned. That and that alone would determine my success.
As tough as it is to believe, you are in one hundred percent control of your success - in life and your career. Now, making these choices that drive personal success is simple, they’re just not easy.
But you do have the power to control how happy you are, how successful you are, and how many of your goals you achieve – here’s how.
The Six Strategies Guaranteed to Drive Personal Success
Now, making these choices that drive personal success and employing these strategies for personal success is simple, they’re just not easy.
Take Ownership
This is one of the vital strategies for personal success: take ownership for the successes in your life and the challenges. If you are not where you want to be in one or more areas of your life, do not look for anyone else to blame or allow anyone else to be your excuse. Decide that you are where you are because you made the decisions that have put you there, and you have everything you need to make different choices.
Assess Your Life
Every aspect of it – your health, your finances, your relationships, your career, and your spirituality – by rating each on a scale of one to five (five being perfection.) Be brutally honest, and once complete, decide one behavior you can add or change to move the needle towards five in each category.
Set Boundaries
As part of the strategies for personal success, you'll start to see changes and these might not always be supported by everyone around you. With those that don’t - set boundaries. Set clear boundaries, rules, and limits to how you will let others treat you. You do not have to cut people out of your life; just limit the impact you allow them to have.
Establish Routine
Making changes in your life can be hard, and establishing routines gives you something to focus on and a way to feel some level of control. Routines are soothing and lead to consistency - the fuel of progress. Whatever areas where routine would help you, establish the behaviors that ensure you progress.
Say No
Learn to use this word and use it to protect time, energy, and the resources you need to drive your success. While we cannot say no to everything we don’t want to do, saying no to the things we can (people who take our energy, events we do not want to attend, and ways we do not want to spend our time.) Remember, whatever you say yes to means you have less time for something else. Make the right decisions.
Protect Your Energy
And last but not least, driving personal success is directly related to where you focus your energy. So, protect your energy. Understand what increases your energy and what depletes it, and then do what you can to ensure your energy level remains high.
For me, it took years to understand how happiness and driving personal success really work. But slowly, over time, I figured it out.
I learned to let my family know I loved them, but I could no longer involve myself in the drama. I set a strong boundary with my husband and realized his addiction was a problem I could not solve for him. And when he lost the battle, it was the boundary I had set that allowed me to love him and navigate my way through the painful loss. And by no longer giving my energy to the wrong things and those I could not control, I had the energy I needed to get my life and my health back.
Those small choices, again simple but not easy, not only brought me success in my relationships, my health, and my spiritual life, but they actually propelled my success with my career and my finances.
By following these six strategies for personal success, I have found myself with a more loving relationship with my family, a strong sense of peace with the loss of my first husband, a new and very successful marriage, and more career and financial success than I ever thought possible, and despite my age, I am in the best shape of my life.
So yes, I believe you can have it all – if you make the decisions and the choices guaranteed to drive success.
