Success. It’s a word with a lot of weight attached to it. A lot of feelings and emotions, not all positive ones. When you hear the word – what is your reaction? What does it mean to you? Do you think you’re successful? Do you compare your own successes to others? Do you hate those posts on Facebook, which declare the ‘top 5 things successful people do’ or the ‘10 things successful people never do’? Do you read them and think – if I want to be successful I need to change all my habits – and then feel like you will never be successful because that seems to big a leap to take?
My number one most hated question that people ask me most often as an Indie Author is – How many books have you sold? I hate the question for a number of reasons, but one of them is that I know people are asking so they can determine how successful I am – because they are basing my success on sales numbers and therefore my income. Another reason I hate it is because the answer to that question makes me feel far from being a successful author.
At the same time, I know that I don’t want to ‘success’ to only be linked to how many books I’ve sold and how much money I make, so I realised I needed a new way.
During my conversation with my soul, which I posted on Monday, my soul pointed out that it was up to me to choose what my definition of failure and success were. Intrigued by the idea, I used a method from a TED talk I watched the other day, and decided to get very clear about what my definition of success was.
I went on a bit of a journey, in my bid to discover what success really meant to me, and in doing so, realised that I had created a little process that others may also find useful. I wanted to share the process with you, but instead of simply writing a blog post and posting pictures, for something different, I thought it would be cool to host a google hangout session, and take people through the process step by step, in the way that I created it and discovered my personal definition.
So, having never done this before, I have decided to hold the session on Monday 23rd February, at 8pm UK time. There is an event page on Facebook that has more information, (even if you don’t have a Facebook account, you can still view the page and see all the info you need, such as the link to join in and watch the session, and also what materials you will need to take part), and I will be posting updates there until the event. I won’t be recording the session (too many technical issues) so if you really want to attend the session and cannot make Monday night, do get in touch, because I may host another session if there is demand for it.
Just to make it clear – this is a completely free session, and there will be no selling whatsoever done within the our time together. It is purely and simply going to be me, taking you through the process I went through, to discover what success really means to you. I may ask at the end for feedback on what you discovered from the session, and if it seems like the process works for others, I may then put a video together to post on YouTube.
Really can’t wait until Monday night! Hope to see you there.
Right on sister! 🙂 I wrote an article on this very topic back in November (http://findingecstasy.com/success/) I can completely relate to your experience, and I applaud your efforts to re-define this (often) triggering word. I feel successful each time I have a reader tell me they found inspiration in my words….The quantity of people we touch is less relevant than the quality with which our words touch them. Keep doing what you’re doing….I know it’s working 😉
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Thank you Rebecca! I too feel successful when I get great feedback, but I was finding that I would still be deflated by people who perceived me to be unsuccessful. I’m hoping that having re-defined my personal view of success, this will no longer be the case. Time will tell!
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Hi Michelle. great event and I found the process really interesting,especially the breakdown afterwards. Interestingly a lot of my responses were very concrete/external so I intend to take that away and work on something more internal. I know I will get a lot out of this.
As an aside I did not really understand the google hangout process and was not sure if you see or hear us. so maybe I can chat with you about that.
Many thanks. I really appreciated the opportunity to go through this and well done. Annette
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Thank you for your feedback! I apologise for the sound issues, it seems I really should have found a mic to use!
I’m glad you were able to follow and do the exercise, it is a fun and hopefully useful process, and like I said, you could use it to create the definition of anything 🙂
I don’t fully understand the google hangout thing either, and I couldn’t see or hear you, but I could see that you were viewing it.
I’m sure if I do another one I will work out how to use it properly!
Thank you for being there for my first hangout though, I appreciate it.x
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