The secret of success is doing what makes you happy while you provide financially for family and community, in my opinion.  Success comes with understanding and loving yourself, not with the amount of money in your bank account.  Money is only a way of keeping score.  You can always make money if you give or do more than you get paid for.  Know that you aren’t bigger or stronger than the markets.  You need to constantly be aware of your local, regional, national, and international markets and how they affect you financially.  Gather knowledge and apply it in your job or for your clients and you can earn money in an up or down economy.

Chapter 1 of the Workbook is names ‘Definition of Success’.  You may believe that defining success is a simple task – “I want to be rich”, “I want to own a nice car”, “I want nice clothes”.  The list can go on and on.  Without a plan to define exactly how you plan on achieving ‘success’ your list will mostly likely just remain a wish list.  Let start out by asking yourself these seemingly simple questions:

• Who do you want to be?
• How much money do you want?
• What will you do to earn that amount?  Do you need a degree, apprenticeship, a network?
• How will you make the world a better place?
• Write your epitaph:  What have you done with your life?
• Since you can’t take it with you, what will you leave behind that proves you lived your life, and lived it well?

I came across the following quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson:  “The purpose of life is not to be happy.  It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”  Then I read, “You can have anything you want if you want it badly enough.  You can be anything you want to be, do anything you set out to accomplish if you hold to that desire with singleness of purpose” by Abraham Lincoln.

As you develop your definition of success, find the labor you love and have the belief that you can have and be all you can conceive.  Write out your definition of success and see yourself in possession of it and start now!  You are in charge of your happiness.  Love yourself — learn that all of your shortcomings can be changed as you alter your life just by altering your attitude.

Thanks for stopping by and remember that you can buy and donate a book for a resident of Eve’s Place that they can take with them after they leave the facility.  I’m greatly enjoying facilitating my mentoring classes at Eve’s Place through the use of the Workbook.  Won’t you help?

Tom Loegering, Author