“Success
is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”
~Maya Angelou
There is so much money made and
given away in the name of ‘success’ in our world.
From the get-rich-quick schemes,
to fads for fame, to growing our popularity in a numbers world, to the
competition for roles on an endless corporate ladder, we get a warped,
superficial sense of what success is.
Do we really know?
The quote at top gets right down
to the basics, and it gives us some raw direction to work with. We may not like
its truth, presently, but we have something to work with. That’s something more
than we had maybe.
1. Liking Ourselves
It sounds so simple: to like
ourselves. And at many levels we probably do.
Some, however, struggle. Some of
us struggle to believe in ourselves, to accept ourselves, or to honour
ourselves in the sight of God. We all have times when we despise the things we
do or how we do them, but hopefully we don’t despise our very beings.
Liking ourselves, for some of us,
requires some work; some of this is ongoing work. In many ways, accepting the
things we don’t like about ourselves is the biggest part of liking ourselves.
Those that do the hard work in accepting the unacceptable bits of themselves
enter into new and happier forms of relationship with themselves.
2. Liking What We Do
Many people hate their day jobs.
Those that do would be better to find work they enjoy, or find meaning and
purpose, somehow, in their present vocation. A change of thinking can change many
things. We can learn to accept once-difficult situations. The transformation of
our thought process is the key.
It’s possible to love everything
about a day jobs, or our daily routines, but for some this requires imagination
and work.
3. Liking How We Do It
The finite qualities of how we do
the things we do gives us true satisfaction. This is the essence of our moments.
Doing the things we do gives us meaning. How we do things is as important as
anything is. The little things take care of the big things.
When we get the little things
right the big things tend to take care of themselves.
Liking how we do things is taking
a healthy pride in the quality of what we do. And no other time can we invest an
appreciable quality into what we do than when we’re doing it.
***
When we like who we are, what we
do, and how we do it, we have the keys to success.
© 2012 S. J. Wickham.
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