Happy New Year!

2010: A new year, a new blog, a new mission.

Did you miss me? I can't believe it's been 6 months since I have posted to the blog. So many exciting things have happened, I can't wait to share them with you.

Watch for more information coming soon. It's gonna be a great ride!!! :o)

Margie

Lesson 22: Defining Success (Part 2)

This post is my thoughts on a lesson from the Beyond Freedom home study course for personal growth and life achievement. This course has been instrumental in transforming my life from stress-full to stress-FREE. Order your own copy today at: http://www.LibertyLeague.com/margieremmers And transform YOUR life from where you are now, to where you want to be.

In my last post, I wrote about how this lesson taught me that I can measure how successful my own life is by how simple it is. And yet, I also realized from this lesson that I do not put much attention toward making sure that it is simple. What a paradox!

When I first got my Beyond Freedom, the first thing I did was skim through the whole thing, and I remember thinking, "OK, don't need to do that exercise, don't need to do that one..."--I was so full of myself!!

I just thought I had it all together.

I couldn't see that the results I was getting in my life were a direct result of my stubborn pride...

This lesson has two exercises. The first involves plotting your successes and failures/setbacks on a graph, and the second is to write a narrative of the ways you have been successful in your life. One of the points of these exercises is to "prove" to yourself just how successful you have been in your life--and that was precisely why I didn't think I needed to do it! I just saw it as a way to bolster your self esteem--and I think rather highly of myself! In fact, I often wonder why everyone else doesn't think as highly of me! Ha ha ha!!! :o)

Seriously, though, it wasn't until I was working on this last week that I realized that you can apply the exercises to specific areas of your life.

So, for me, what came up was the idea to complete the exercise by looking specifically at areas in which I have been successful (or unsuccessful) at creating a life of simplicity.

I'm looking forward to it!

Lesson 22: Defining Success (Part 1)

This post is my thoughts on a lesson from the Beyond Freedom home study course for personal growth and life achievement. This course has been instrumental in transforming my life from stress-full to stress-FREE. Order your own copy today at: http://www.LibertyLeague.com/margieremmers And transform YOUR life from where you are now, to where you want to be.

Today's lesson is about defining success. From the lesson title, I thought it was going to be on thinking about your goals in very specific terms--we all know that that's the key to achieving them, right?

But then I read the lesson and remembered that what we are focussing on here is understanding what success means to us. How will we know when we're successful? What would have to happen in order for us to say we're a successful person?

Of course, the answer is different for everybody, but what came to mind for me personally, of course, was simplicity. When I have pared down my life to only a few, simple things that are meaningful to me, then I will feel successful.

But if I value this so much, what do I do on a daily basis to make it a reality in my life?

The lesson says, "We all have the capacity to break through, to constantly achieve more, to reach a level of personal freedom. But it doesn't just come. It won't arrive until you put forward a concerted effort. The core to success is energy, focus, attention, care and daily practice. It's practice. It's training. It's getting in a positive routine and staying there."

Wow. It never occurred to me that I should practice living a simple life. But it makes so much sense! If I have a habit of overcomplicating things, then I must make a conscious and concerted effort to allow things to be easy. Brent Payne says, "How would you do things differently if you were willing to let it be easy?" The operative phrase there, for me anyway, is willing to let it.

Another important point of the lesson is to teach us that success is not really a thing or an accomplishment, but a feeling. "So, if success is a feeling, the lesson says, "We can teach ourselves to feel successful every minute of every day."

More on how we teach ourselves to do that tomorrow.