Success Is About Going Beyond

Who told you that you couldn’t be successful? Who told you that what you wanted isn’t what success is all about? No one else needs to know about it for now. One day it will be your story. Success is about going beyond a limited vision of yourself one step at a time. It’s about expansion. I remember when my mother, daughter, and I decided to take our first vacation in many years, we sat down and imagined where we wanted to go. We knew we wanted beach time, but our budget was tight, and all the systemic thoughts and feelings about why we shouldn’t and couldn’t take a vacation came up. In our family we are frugal. We stay within our means. We build carefully and save for a rainy day. With these thoughts in mind, we limited our search to Florida beaches only. To our shock we found many beautiful places that were affordable, even with the airfares. With one different thought, we’d gone beyond what we thought was possible and expanded our world! What if this is a bad place? we wondered.

Just For Now

What if it’s a scam? Worst of all came the thoughts, What if we need the money before vacation time arrives? Can we get our money back? It was only when we were finally there and had paid for it and it all worked out that our nervous systems started to relax. Then we started thinking about the next vacation. Excited, knowing our vacation limitation cycle had been broken, we pushed our vacation boundaries even further. The same thing happened the first time I hosted an event at a large center. They asked for all sorts of deposits up front that put me at financial risk, and I was terrified. All the old what if and you can’t thoughts came up, bringing stress and fear. But I knew those old voices. I was clear about the limiting systemic sentences in my head. Then I did it again, and then again. It took a long time to move out of fear and the What are you thinking! mindset. This steady, incremental approach to success works. If a dream sounds too far out of our bandwidth for us to accomplish, the weight of old systemic baggage can make us give up before we even start.

Even Better Than the Real Thing

Success is directly tied to purpose, and purpose is tied to personal motivation. Purpose is the rocket fuel that blasts you past your negative systemic sentences and programming. The clearer and more embodied and inspiring your purpose, the greater the success. However, there are different kinds of purpose driven by different kinds of motivators. Lowest level motivators are based in survival fears. I must make a lot of money so I don’t starve like my grandmother did. I must succeed and get my kids out of this dangerous neighborhood! There’s nothing wrong with fear as a motivator and survival as a purpose. Sometimes it’s just where we’re at. But the more we taste success, the more we want to expand and see where else it can take us and what more we can create. Material drivers gradually transform into spiritual drivers as our consciousness expands. Love replaces fear as a motivator. We rise from a reactive/victim mindset to a creator mindset.

The Narrow Way

No level is better than another level. As we examine the levels, you will likely notice that you identify with more than one. This is quite common. You are likely to find yourself on the lower levels when you are in survival mode and also when you are creating the base for your next step up. The higher levels tend to show up when we go into our creative space where limitations are fewer, until they eventually disappear. Depending on your beliefs and what you make them mean, your spiritual orientation may land you in different spaces as well. As you read about the levels, notice what resonates or stirs up limiting thoughts for you. What or who stops you from imagining your highest good and happiness? What or who stops you from dreaming your dream? What do you tell yourself about success and purpose? Are you daunted by the very words? In these levels there can be a strong desire to do things differently, move ahead, build stakeholders, and create a compelling differentiator. Impatience and appetite are pronounced. There may be a robust vision but also a frustration with apparent limitations and a niggling fear of getting too big. Your thoughts, feelings, and actions tend to center around surviving, struggling, building, driving, and proving yourself. Here, survival is success. Feast and famine are common. Your perceived limitations can feel overwhelming. Drivers are mostly fear oriented, and relationships are often formed based on their usefulness. This is the beginning of your adventure. You are seeking your first grains of success, and you cultivate stakeholders and friends and learn to navigate other systems even as you are growing your own. Politics can feature quite prominently here. Who and what you know is important as these connections give you leverage. You may feel like you are constantly working to do enough to build a solid base, get your life together, and advance. Success at this level is a little scary. You fear your ability to attain success, and when you have it, you may fear its loss. The upside is that you may discover you are a great workhorse. You can become an expert, create a strong network, and position yourself to recognize and take advantage of opportunities. The downside is that you can suffer from burnout and be overwhelmed by all the negative stories you tell yourself. Operating at a level three, you may find yourself vacillating between feeling like you are an expert and an imposter. As you solidify at level three, feeling like you know a little more and have a little credibility, a restlessness creeps in. There is a sense that there is an adventure with your name on it.