What does success look like to you?

I was listening to an interview with two amazing women, Dr. Zelana and Lisa Bilyeu -if you don’t know them, check them out on IG- and they were talking about one of my passions: how do you make change happen and then last. You know when there’s something bothering you, either in a relationship, or in your job, and you feel paralyzed. You want to break free and make changes, but you can’t. There’s a pull towards keep doing the same things, even if you’re in pain. I find that many times, we stay there until the pain is to hard to stand or when we get a wake up call by getting sick or in an accident.

But in the interview, I love that Bilyeu mentioned two of the things I firmly believe are key to make changes in our lives and have them last. One, is your mindset. And the other is to be aware. Both depend on you being very purposeful when you do things. If you don’t want to change and you don’t want to get out of your comfort zone, that’s amazing, stay there and enjoy the life you’ve chosen. But there will not be another life, you can’t start with regrets or blaming the world for not letting you be more or better. It’s your choice, you accept it and life that life. When you want to grow, though, and change and keep getting better and challenge yourself to grow, then get out of your comfort zone and be all in. That’s when you have to work on your mindset and be aware of what you want and things will happen.

In the end, it comes to how you want to live your life. Like I was saying in the training to be aware of what triggers the anxious thoughts, the same goes with fear or stress. When you feel you are losing control and your stress or anxiety take over, you ask yourself: why am I feeling this way? what is causing me to feel this way? As you get clarity on the things that make you feel like that, you can control them. You can always decide how your are going to react to things that show up for you. Feelings are not different, you feel them, acknowledge them and do something to be aware of what causes them. Then you move on. You are in control of your reaction and you can take action to be better at it. If it doesn’t work at first, you keep trying and you’ll get better.

Later, in the interview they talked about what would you say to your younger self? And Bilyeu said that she wouldn’t tell her that things would be fine, because she felt she needed to go through the tough times to be who she is today. I sort of agree with this, the hard times really shape who we become, but I also disagree. Because we will always find a hard time at some point when we keep moving on and trying new things, things that scare us, meet new people that can open doors or throw us back to old patterns, so that’s not the most important thing to avoid or to know from the beginning. What I would totally tell my younger self is to trust my gut, to believe in myself like nobody else believes. I would tell myself to keep writing and keep nourishing my soul and spirituality. And to keep being brave and not settle for a life that was never what I was dreaming of, but what others were expecting of me. Others that were completely irrelevant and didn’t love me. That’s what I would tell myself if I could go back. And you know what, it’s exactly what I tell myself now. Because younger or older, the only moment we own is NOW. Our dreams of the future help us motivate us to move forward, our past taught us lessons, but the only time we can actually DO and BE is NOW.

So to answer the question of the title, success looks like anything you want. For me it’s become the author I dreamt of when I was younger and connecting to others and helping as many people as I can everyday. What does success look like to you?