What is success?
Success can mean different things to different people. For some it’s money, for others it’s family, for other people it may be status or assets. So in order to be successful you first need to establish exactly what that means for you.
I recommend writing it down because then it becomes more real, you can stick it up on your wall somewhere where you will see it every day so you are constantly reminded what success means for you.
For me personally, success is 360° contentment. What do I mean by that? I mean that I believe true success comes from a healthy mind, body, spirit and outlook. When one of these factors are out of sync I believe it leads to unhappiness and unfulfillment. Unhappiness and unfulfillment may get in the way of you reaching your true potential and in turn prevent you from becoming successful.
A healthy mind
For me, mindset is everything. Looking after your mind is laying the foundation for your success. It’s making sure that you have balance within your mind. So you are practicing mindfulness through meditation, breath work, and being present.
It’s about living in the moment so instead of multitasking in everything you do; you’re actively trying to think about just one task at a time in the moment you are doing it. Cleaning your teeth you are thinking about your teeth rather than tomorrow night’s dinner and so on.
A healthy mind also requires positivity. The mind loves to focus on the negative; it’s drawn to it in fact. In order to maintain a healthy mind, we need to actively seek out the positivity and repeat those positive mantras so that we are attracting positivity into our lives rather than negativity.
Positive people attract positive people. Positive thoughts attract positive thoughts. It’s the law of attraction.
A healthy body
In order to take care of other people and tasks such as work and dependants, first we need to look after ourselves. We need to take care of our bodies which function like machines. Food is the fuel. We need to be making sure we are eating a healthy balanced nutritional diet and taking regular daily exercise. This is interlinked with maintaining a healthy mind because a good workout at the gym is proven to reduce stress and what does reduced or eliminated stress give us? A healthy mind. The health and safety announcement on an airplane advises you to put on your own oxygen mask before helping others. We need to apply this to life, first we take care of ourselves so that we can be strong and dependable for other people.
A healthy spirit
I know some of you may be thinking well what’s a healthy spirit? Sounds like airy, fairy nonsense? Well sure, but I think we can all relate to a time when we’ve walked into a room and the energy in there is so low that if we’ve been in a great mood, it’s instantly changed our state from positive to heavy and down or we may even start to feel negative. Or, there’s that one person in the office who no matter what you talk to them about they find the negative to moan about and it instantly brings your mood down.
This is your spirit. You want to attract positivity, wealth and health into your life and you do this by living positively. Having a healthy, happy spirit. It’s about having good energy and passing on positive vibes. So if you have a bad experience happen to you, reflect upon the learning from that negative experience and take away the positive from it. There is a positive to all bad situations if you fight to look hard enough. And it is a fight, life is HARD, there’s no denying it, but the positivity is truly there if you want to see it. One of my favourite quotes of all time is by Roald Dahl:
“Watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.”
I’ve lived my life by this little mantra. It’s so true – there is magic and positivity everywhere – it’s just sometimes harder to find or see it. Sometimes negativity clouds our vision. Sometimes it’s just easier to be cynical and choose to let our negative beliefs limit us.
A healthy outlook
For me a healthy outlook is one that recognises what is happening but chooses to find the positivity, learning and development from every situation. This isn’t always easy either, but it is always possible. It is important to acknowledge feelings of hurt, anger, upset, despair – sometimes things do feel unfair. But once we’ve taken as much time as we need to feel that pain/frustration or anger we need to then learn and apply to our lives the lesson from it. Life repeats patterns to teach us lessons, only when we apply our learning do these negative patterns or cycles stop occurring.
Stats and Facts
For those of you who believe the proof is in the science – please click here and let me refer you to this article showing various studies that support the majority of what I mention above. Furthermore, click here for an article exploring the science behind the law of attraction – there’s also much more available on the internet about this – so don’t listen to me! Explore your own research!
Wishing you positivity in abundance and I hope you too can live a successful life by applying the 360° approach.