“When you know yourself you are empowered. When you accept yourself you are invincible.”
–Tina Lifford
What do you need for success? Well, you need to know what you define success as.
There are some rules, or perhaps better there are some standard ingredients.
Just as you need to combine something dry like let’s say a powder with some sort of a liquid like a coconut milk to create a paste. You need these three things to to get to your version of success;
1. Knowing Yourself,
2. Accepting Yourself,
3. Being OK with where you are now.
I’ll give you examples from my personal experience.
Getting to know myself better doesn’t have to be hard, I only have to look at the things that are easy for me to do. To be attentive of the things that give me energy and that deplete me of energy, and things that excite me and that scare me.
Then I have to understand how I relate to these things and what my goal is in life.
For example, I love to grow into a stronger resilient person, which means that if things scare me I go towards them instead of away from them.
Some examples.
The things that scare me the most, I have noticed, are also the things that give me the most pleasure. I’ll give you some examples; I was really afraid of performing on stage in front of a camera, with a microphone. In fact I almost fainted the first time when i had to shadow one of my later colleagues. I found out that the guy in the control room thought my performance was ok, that just my voice was too soft. I knew it was because of nerves and not enough stamina. So I got to work. A couple of months later I was teaching a Cyberobics class weekly, sometimes more times a week that was on stage, recorded in an app and at times in German, while I was much more comfortable and fluent in English.
It was SO much fun as soon as I had decided that I was going to go for it and be succesful at it.
The tings that light me up are things like this, writing and sharing either on a blog or on Instagram or on my YouTube channel. While I had been afraid in the past of failure – which to me meant no likes, no comments, no subscribers or even worse dislikes, unsubscribers or complainers – now I only focus on the intention of sharing great content. I’m working on being completely unattached by any of the outside metrics. What matters is that I like it, that I love sharing it and that it comes from my heart. Whoever needs to hear or read it for their personal reasons will. And if they like it, hate it, get triggered by it or love it, that is none of my business.
The things that excite me and give me energy are things like learning new ways of being, discovering new people, new areas, countries, foods. New Experiences in the broadest sense. I love to travel the landscape of my inner self, and the landscapes out there. It makes me feel alive, while I am at times pretty scared of the new decisions that I have decided upon. My last fact being leaving Berlin behind after 7 years and leaving for New Zealand without a plan, without an overflowing bank account and without any idea how I would be able to support myself. What I did have was TRUST. An understanding how life really works; My experience, my safety, my money, all of it comes through me. I am the creator in my reality. And in a nutshell this is the rule of thumb; When I keep myself calm, I joyful and in trust, I will experience the mirror of that which is calm, joyful and trustworthy situations.
With regards to no. 2 Self-Acceptance, well now I’m very happy with who I am and how I look and how I behave, the things I’m into and the things I dislike. There have been times though that this was the complete opposite. And all that this does is take away life energy. Because it means I had to repress who I am. And I used precious time and energy to argue with life, with who I am, how I look etc.
I don’t care that I did, it’s what I did. What matters is that I now use my energy differently.
The last one seems counter intuitive, but if I’m not happy where I am now, even if that’s a far cry away from where I want to be, with whom I want to be or how I’d like to be, I will only create more of that.
Success is the culmination of a number of things that add up over the course of time, what success is to changes as I change, as well as my goals do over time.
At one point it was all about the outside, the house, car, hottie, career, my outfits etc.
Now it continues to move in the direction of inner fulfilment,how I feel, my skills, the conversations I have with spirit, myself. It’s about purpose. Doing what I love and inspiring others like you to do the same.
I can imagine that this post causes for many questions to arise. If so just reach out to me via email; monique@moniquebjagroe.com
And I might make another blog or a YouTube about it. Anonymous if you wish. Of course.
With so much love,
Monique