Hello, again.

Whether I’m greeting you, the reader, or myself, for the first time in a long time… I’m not quite sure.

Hello, again.

Whether I’m greeting you, the reader, or myself, for the first time in a long time… I’m not quite sure.

What I do know is that I’ve been running. And that’s the honest truth that I’m not normally willing to admit.

You’d think as someone who works exclusively in the businesses of self-awareness and growth, that it would be easier for me to admit when I’m avoiding something.

However, that’s the thing about avoidance… sometimes we avoid things so well we aren’t even aware that we’re avoiding them.

Isn’t it wild and weird how we avoid the thing we know will help us? Why is that?

I know that writing helps me to move through big emotions, thoughts, and feelings, and yet, I’m going on 3 years of distancing myself from my craft.

Perhaps it’s because when I do sit down to write and process, a lot comes up.

It also requires that I look honestly at the less sexy parts of who I am and have been suppressing for some time now.

I think I’ve been moving through a lot of frustration and disappointment. I find it helps me (and every other human) to give a name to what I’m feeling.

I’m not where I thought I would be professionally… and that’s tough. Especially when I’ve been working tirelessly the last 3 years to build an online presence to expand my brand and initiatives.

Most days it seems inauthentic to continue showing up online and promoting something that I struggle to be proud of. I’m proud of the work I’ve done and those I’ve helped and yet, I still struggle with “it” never feeling like enough.

I still struggle to define success in a way that excludes monetary achievements.

I struggle to rise above the confines of societal standards to tell myself that though the monetary return isn’t as great as I want it to be, I’ve still succeeded.

What does it mean to be successful? How will we know once we are successful? Is it a state or a place? A goal or an achievement?

Maybe it’s just an elusive concept that we forged long ago so that we could place people in boxes: the successful/accomplished and those who are not.

I think the thing about defining success is that it’s ever-changing on so many levels.

We never have the slightest idea of the trials and tribulations someone has gone through to achieve what we might define as “success.”

Maybe you feel like a successful parent when your child gets into an impressive school or maybe you feel like a successful parent for the mere fact that you were able to become one.

Both could be defined as success though they’re worlds apart.

In my own situation, some may say that I am successful because I chose to leave the safety and structure of a job and go off on my own professional journey.

Others may only see me as successful when I consistently earn six figures as a self-employed business owner.

Both could be right and both could be wrong. Yet, neither should matter because at the end of the day what matters is how I define success, right?

Right. And yet that still feels wrong.

I’m starting to think that maybe “success” is simply a quality of life.

An ever-changing, constantly evolving, intangible state that we achieve by becoming present.

As I begin to wrap this up, I decided to google what “success” even means anyways.

The answer I got was: success is the state or condition of meeting a defined range of expectations.

The word “expectations” really stuck out to me.

We can never achieve success if we are always chasing expectations. Expectations change, they are arbitrary, and essentially represent a finish line that keeps moving away from you the closer you get to it.

I’m working on redefining what it means to be successful. On this day, in this moment, I would consider the fact that I finally sat down to write… a success.

What small (or big) successes are you celebrating today? Remembering that only you alone can ever fully know just how big of a win a seemingly small success can be.