Re-Defining Success

Sometimes is it the way that you are defining success which makes the critical difference between whether you feel you are achieving success or not – and whether you stick with the process in order to actually achieve the final goal.  If you set your marker of success as only the final goal in a long project or process without recognizing all the valuable pieces and stages that help you reach the goal, you may not find enough success along the way to keep going.  And you will be missing the opportunity to witness all that you are accomplishing.

Let’s face it.  The reality of change, goals, and being healthy is that they often require a bit of time and effort to accomplish.  And feeling a sense of success and achievement not only at the end of the journey but also along the way is critical to moving forward.  That is why it is so valuable to have a definition of success that not only encompasses the whole of the process, but which also acknowledges the steps along the way.

As usual, I have a client case story to share that highlights this point.  It is my client Jill whom I spoke about in the post earlier this week who is trying to lose about 30 pounds.  Anyone who has ever tried to lose weight knows that if you are doing it in a healthy way (versus using a radical diet or fasting method which doesn’t keep the weight off in the long run), it can take awhile – especially to shed the final five pounds. 

Jill was feeling frustrated because despite working with a personal trainer for exercise and doing coaching  for four weeks to get a better understanding on the mental patterns behind the eating, she hadn’t lost hardly any weight.  She was not feeling successful because she was using weight loss as her only marker for success.  And even though she recognized that she had uncovered several big “ahas” about her patterns and gained great insight into her behaviors, she hadn’t consciously re-framed her definition of success to include these critical pieces.

As her coach, I could clearly see the changes that were occurring and that not only was she thinking differently, but that she was also making very different choices with a new level of awareness.  But Jill, who was so focused on the number on the scale and the big goal, wasn’t recognizing all that she was already doing and accomplishing.

When I invited Jill to make a list of what she was doing differently NOW, she was able to step into a space of new recognition that gave her a big boost of energy that came from feeling successful.  And to deepen that awareness and make it more concrete, I invited Jill to expand her definition of success.  So now, in addition to using the actual weight loss as a marker of success, she has added in:

• pausing to think about what she eats before eating
• making healthier eating choices (which she realized she has already been doing 50% of the time!!)
• choosing other activities for relaxing at night aside from eating
• decreasing soda consumption to just one a day

Acknowledging these actions as part of her definition of success is new, but she had already accomplished them over the past four weeks.  When she added them to her definition of success, her sense of satisfaction with her process and how she felt about her ability to be strong and move forward increased.  And instead of feeling frustrated, she is now feeling successful and motivated to continue.

So if you are in the midst of a process of change and expansion and are feeling frustrated, I invite you to take a close look at what you are using to mark or define your success – and see if there are other pieces that might be good to add in to your definition as well.