Contentment: The Key to Success

Some of you may be thinking by the title of this blog that I am going to speak on prosperity and perhaps that everyone can obtain it with this one simple trick!

Or perhaps you read into it differently, as I intended it, and figured out that it's real topic will be more about being content than finding success.

You see, success is something that changes meaning depending on the perspective you have about it. It can also create a desire in you that will never be fully satisfied. Contentment, however, is the perspective by which, no matter how your life turns out, you can feel successful and accomplished.

What I have observed in my own life, and in the lives of others, is that no matter how hard you try at something you may never succeed at it, especially to a standard you, or others, may have set. I have observed people equally as talented at something as another, yet one finds success and the other does not. I also see too many people become a slave to success and that brings misery. I was in that boat myself not too long ago. I had big dreams, but with them came the fear of never living up to those dreams. Don't get me wrong here, dreaming big is a wonderful thing to do and I still have those dreams. Where it becomes an issue is when you allow those dreams to determine everything you do and through the process refuse to be joyful until said dreams are obtained. Or you allow fear into your heart and you choose to never pursue those dreams in the first place.

The reality is your dreams may never be obtained as you perceive them. If you can come to terms with that then the process will be so much easier. The process to obtaining your goals will become something you enjoy and in the end you will look back with a full heart because of how you came to be there versus an emptiness from getting there no matter the cost and refusing to be satisfied until there.

Let us dream and aspire to fulfill those dreams, but let us also hold them loosely and choose to be okay if we never get there in the way we envisioned. One can still enjoy writing, per se, while never finding a large audience. One, also, can play music for the love of playing music, even if that music doesn't inspire many.

We must do what we love and pursue it to the best of our ability. We should always seek to be excellent in whatever we pursue, but let us not have the end sacrifice the means. Allow the means, the process, every day life be what we find fulfillment in, then we will feel successful all the time because we let the little things bring us joy and satisfaction. We may even reach our goals and that's great! But if we don't then that is great too because we had a wonderful adventure of it.