To Be Able to Say the Same

I remember sitting at a leadership roundtable, you know that meeting where all the “important” people who made all the decision were in attendance. I was the odd person in the room, in SOOO many ways. As we were milling about getting ready for the meeting to start, someone asked me about where I lived. They then took a survey in the group and I lived the farthest away from the office in both miles and travel time. The whole room thought I was crazy. After the meeting I had the CEO and COO come to me and ask why I lived so far away. They were concerned that my commute would wear me out. I had a simple answer, “My home is where I want to live, how I want to live, and keeps safe and warm the people I value most in this world. I did not choose that location for convenience to the office, I chose it for it’s important place in my life.” They both went silent, hugged me and reminded me that THAT is why they needed me in that room.

How do you measure your success? Is it by your bank balance, the people you love, the successful lives of your children, family attachments, by career milestones, titles, pay levels, or maybe the value the place you call home? Do you have ways to measure your own personal success as a human being? The places you give your time and money, the way you care for friends and family, or maybe by the ways you have contributed to making the world around you a better place? Each of us has a different definition of success, and we are the only one who can truly understand what we value and why. It is what we value that makes our world a better place. And some days we do that better than other days.

In this online, instant access, internet based world in which we live, not everyone will understand why you have made the choices you’ve made in order to live the life you have chosen. These words from Tagore remind us of that idea:

The Butterfly counts not months but moments and has time enough. 
 - Rabindranath Tagore 1941

Building your life is about how you invest your time and resources to be the best version of yourself. To be able to bring what only YOU can bring to the world, to make it a better place. And if that means living differently than everyone else, you go ahead and do just that. You do not need permission to change and reorganize your life to suit what other people think…it is YOUR life, your moments, your time. Do with it what you see fit AND make choices that you can defend to the end about how and why you lived the way you do. We each only have one life to live, and we will be held accountable for our choices, actions, and attitudes. And by making choices that build a life that we define as successful, by using the moments we have to make our world better AND by loving and giving to the people we hold most dear…well, to me that sounds like a pretty good definition of success.

Just an FYI. I have lived in my house for twenty-two years and may sometimes get annoyed by long drives to get certain places, yet when I pull up our driveway I know that I am happy, successful and at home! I hope you can arrange your life to be able to say the same.