Is it a number on your scale? Is it a certain balance in your bank account? Is it the title underneath your name? Is it the number of deals you closed or sales you made? Is it your ability to influence a group of people? Is it what other people say about you? Is it being indispensable? Is it your relationship status? Is it what you say about yourself? Is it how many followers you have on social media? Is it the family, or community, or nation that you come from? Is it a degree or certification? Is it the car you drive? Is it the house you live in? Is it how much you gave away last year? Is it who your children are and who they’re becoming? Is it …

WHAT is it that makes you successful?

While this is another layered conversation, I’d like you to really think about what makes you successful and therefore, how you know that you are successful in this life. Do your answers to the above questions determine your success somehow? If so, which ones? Why?

The older I get and the more personal healing work I’ve done, and the more professional experience I’ve gained, I’ve come to believe that success has very little to do with the answers to the above questions. Sneaky of me to ask you to consider them, I know. But so often, we hear and see messages that tell us that these, or similar, are the measures of our success. The truth is, true success is knowing who I am at the core and living authentically in my true identity. The truth is, true success is knowing who you are at the core and living authentically in your true identity. And this begs the question, what is my identity? What is your identity?

So many things get packaged as identity these days that really aren’t. For instance, there was an extended season between my mid-twenties and early thirties when I lived as though my identity was my vocation. Work itself and how I was perceived in my work outcomes became my identity. Later in my mid-thirties, I started to see another area I’d put on for years and years as an identity called, “People’s opinions of me.” That was fun to see. When things were challenging financially, I found myself living with an identity of “debtor” and I lived under the weight and shame of that identity for a long while. And I’ve got a much longer list I could share …

We can create identities out of so many messages, so many lies. We literally internalize, as in consume, whatever the source of success is, or the outcome that matches up with our idea of success, AND, once consumed, it becomes who we are. Whoa. Read that extra-long sentence again. What have you consumed? What has become part of who you are that tells you what success is?

Let’s go deeper …

When we do that, our sense of fulfillment and success becomes tied to that identity. And when that thing, whatever it is, isn’t going so well, it can rock us to our core. Because, it means that we aren’t successful. And when “we,” our identity wrapped up in that outcome, aren’t successful we can go into crisis because who we thought we were supposed to be and who we are don’t add up. They don’t agree. It can be disillusioning, send us into panic-mode or fear or depression or control, and cause us a lot of pain.

But what if we could know who we are for real and thereby, clearly understand what success is? Wouldn’t we want to know it? Wouldn’t we go after that understanding like our lives depended upon it? For me, once I understood that this was possible, my answers felt like a no-brainer. I was like, “I can?!” Then I was like, “Well of course I’d want to know it!!!” And then, you know what? I went after it like my life depended upon it, because well, it did.

The thing is, in this process I’ve also learned a lot about how I was living before and why I was taking on all kinds of identities that weren’t the truth. I had to sort through a lot of lies to get into the actual truth about my life, my story and the experiences therein, my beliefs, and my hopes for the future. I’ve had to deal with hang-ups and doubts and failures as I fumbled through new experiences where I now lived as my actual self, the me I am at my core, in real-time. I bring this up because it’s one thing to know who you are at the core. It’s another to understand the ways you’ve been living contrary to that truth and find how they still have a grip on you. Those realities have to be dealt with as you go.

Practically speaking, knowing who we are at the core can be as simple and complex as identifying our core values, our personal vision, mission, purpose, and living them out. When I meet with clients for purpose coaching, I’m regularly amazed and moved by what we uncover about who they actually are in the discovery process. I’ve cried tears as clients have shared what’s really inside of them and we pull it out and put it on the white board. I’ve laughed as I join them in that giddy feeling of, “Wait, this IS who I am! This is who I was MADE to be!!” It’s astounding and beautiful and encouraging and inspiring and mysterious and wonderful. And I love, love, love helping people to see who they are. Because once they know, they’re set into success for real. They have a whole new standard, a personal measure, of what it means to show up in their lives and in this world powerfully to make the difference only they can make.

Success itself isn’t easy. But as my friend Ford often says about things we want to be easy, “It’s not easy, but it’s simple.” The simplicity of success is knowing the measure, the standard. Once we know that, we adjust course and then tweak. We tweak more. We grow. We tweak. We transform. We tweak. We fall down. We tweak. We stand up. We tweak. But it’s our journey. It’s our process. It’s so stinkin’ personal and beautiful and challenging and OURS. We get to say to those other messages, “Thanks, but I know what success is for me and that’s not it.” And we keep going.

If you are ready for help in getting clear on who you are at the core, and therefore, what success is for you, I’m here. Purpose coaching is my specialty, my favorite, and my absolute honor to coach you through … Let’s get started.