December 9, 2022

How to be successful – in a nutshell

Yes! The answer really is here somewhere

First, we need to have a talk about what “success” means. But before that, we need to have a pre-talk about what success means to you.

Can I start with a story?

Not that long ago, I was in a restaurant for lunch with a woman 30 years older than me. We had met at a singing workshop, and I was glad to meet up with her again as she struck me as a smart woman who after years of raising a family, being a head teacher, living in Birmingham (UK) and Brighton had come back to her home city, Glasgow (my respective home town) and is pursuing her singing passion – quite right, too! She has a great voice for jazz.

What we talked about at lunch…

We covered a number of subjects in that couple of hours and one of them was about believing in God! Yep! I’m going down this route, so look away if you’ve got trouble with that! Anyway, moving on…

We got around to talking about God, but before that, we talked about Christmas coming up and Santa Claus.

How we got onto Santa Claus, I am not 100% sure, but wait!

She said, “In our house, when I was growing up in Glasgow there were two things I didn’t believe in, one was Churchill (the British Prime Minister during the second world war) because we didn’t believe in him in our house, and Santa Claus because…” and then she went on to explain how she had found out there was no Santa Claus.

I can’t remember what that was, so I must ask her, but I did share with her that my greatest disappointment was Rudolph, as who wouldn’t love a flying reindeer as a friend?! (I am particularly fond of reindeer and deer in general, in fact, the logo of my voiceover website is a stag and we have a lovely image of a stag on the home page and a really cute couple of deer images on our Listen up page, too – and, no, this wasn’t a ruse to get you to our voiceover site, it just fits in with the story!) But, anyhoo…

So, we are talking about things we are led to believe are true but with no tangible proof or that we don’t agree with or that are just plain non-truths, and she says to me, “Do you believe in a God” and I said to her “Give me your definition of what you consider to be God or “a God” and I’ll tell you if I believe in that.” And that, to be honest, was the end of that part of our conversation, because, then, as you see, the next step of that becomes arduous, it really does take some talking on the nature of all things, what we have heard through different religions, truths and non-truths, people’s conversations over many, many years and our own internal compass of what we feel and intuit on a spiritual level – and, of course, many won’t consider themselves “spiritual”, but I do.

And that’s another article, but in the meantime, let me take us back to the point at hand ‘success’. WTF is it? Answers on a postcard, please! Let me know your thoughts right here. I’ll tell you what I think at this juncture in my life, my experience, my thoughts, etc…

Success is by your own definition. Let me ask you a question, what does ‘success’ mean to you?

You might want to look back into your family history and check that. Is your definition based on handed-down thoughts, ideas, and beliefs? They might make sense to you now as you have been conditioned to understand them as ‘Truths’. But, have you thought maybe success is simply being happy with life, staying alive, and bringing joy and sense into what is a world of billions of people, numerous languages, even more dialects, and animals who interact and communicate with us in their own way – like your dog or your cat… or is it making millions of whatever currency is the money of your country, or bossing people around, or leading the way in manufacturing, politics or science or pulling the wool over people’s eyes or setting people free with the ‘Truth’..?