What's Your Definition of Success

Over the years I have wrestled with discovering exactly what God wanted me to do in order to live out my purpose. I have always know that God has a specific plan for my life. Part of that plan involves fulfilling what I believe to be His purpose for my life. I have always known that I would somehow minister (serve) others. However, serving others can be accomplished in so many different ways.

Back in 2009, while driving in my car, headed to see a client of mine. I heard this voice within me state, "Empower others to succeed in life and work". For so long I struggled with including this as part of my life's purpose. The reason for this struggle was because I felt just like so many other who feel that success is a focus on extrinsic factors such as money and possessions. For the past couple of years this thought has kept me from pursuing my God-inspired purpose, which is to "help women of faith and purpose, discover, pursue, and live their God-inspired dreams." As a result of living their God-inspired dreams, they will be successful in life and work.

Knowing this was still not enough for me to let go of such debilitating thoughts about success. So I took out my journal, started writing, and defined what success really meant for me. Here is my definition of success.

• Living a Spirit led life
• Honoring and pursuing my God-inspired dreams
• Being happy and passionate about my life and the work I do
• Leaving a legacy (footprints) for others to follow when searching for help, hope, and direction for their own lives

What about you? What is your definition from success? The great part of it all is that we are all unique and God has a unique plan for all of our lives. I refuse to hold back any longer from pursuing my purpose because now I have clarity.

Your turn. Take out your journal or a piece of paper and start writing. Even better, share your definition of success with the world by posting your response right here. Own your unique purpose and get on the path to discovering happiness and success in life and work.

Carla Burrows- Author, Speaker

Change Your Vision. Change Your Life

3 Keys to Mastering Your Goals

 

 

 

It's the first week in March and like many others I looked over my goals and realized that I was no where I had hope to be in a couple of key areas. I am such a visionary and optimist that I sometimes get lost in the dream process. I love dreaming. Of course there is nothing wrong with dreaming big dreams, it is the beginning process of creating something great for your life. However, unless you get focused on taking action toward making your vision  your reality, you will find yourself stuck in the dream stage.

What about you? Have you taken a look at your goals to evaluate where you are in the process? Do you need to get past the dream stage and move forward, taking action toward mastering your goal? Great! I would like to share with you three things that helped me get back on track to making my dreams a reality.

• Key # 1-  Revisit Your Goals- Look over your list of goals and decide which will make the biggest impact in your life right now. What do you want to achieve in the next month. My original list of goals were a page and a half long. Whoa! No wonder I felt overwhelmed and unable to move forward. I decided to listed the top three priorities and underneath I wrote out 3 things to devote my time to this month.from each. Are you feeling overwhelmed by your list of goals. If so consider revisiting your goals and choose to work on your top priorities.

• Key # 2-  Give Yourself Permission to Change Your Routine- After writing out my priorities, it became apparent to me that I would not be able to work on my daily interventions without rearranging my daily routine. for instance if I wanted to work out 4-5 days a week, I would have to change the time from evening to mornings and work out at home instead of the gym most on most days. What about you? Do you need to change your routine around in order to get things done?

• Key # 3- Focus On Intervention- Nurses develop something called care plans for their clients as a way to identify a problems, decide on a specific, measurable goal and design a course of action to take to reach the desired goals. They refer to the plans of action as interventions. The interventions are written out in a way to identify exactly how often the interventions will take place, such as daily or 3 times weekly.  Even though reaching the desired goal is the target, the daily focus is put on the interventions. If you can follow your daily or weekly interventions, in most cases you will find that at the end of the designated time frame you will have reached your goal. Go ahead give it a try. Choose just 1-3 interventions to focus on for your desired goal.

Here is an example of what I wrote out as a way to reach one of the goals that I decided was a top priority in my own life.

Goal- Write material to help other discover, pursue, and live their God-inspired purpose.
Interventions-

• Write and post blog 2 times weekly
• Develop 1 information product designed to help others discover, pursue, and live their God-inspired purpose within next 30 days.  

I set this as one of my goals at the start of the year as a way to honor and pursue my own God-inspired purpose. Somehow the vision seemed overwhelming. After much prayer and contemplation, I came to the understanding that I was too focused on the big picture. Doing so made the thought of moving forward seem impossible. However, once I followed this much simpler process, I was able to move forward with my plans.

Get started. Try it yourself and discover how much easier it will be to reach your goals. Let me know if this was helpful to you. Also when you move forward toward reaching your goal, please feel free to share your success story with me.