Define Your Own Success In 6 Spheres

How do you define success? By mooning over celeb Instagram pics and feeling like crap? Measuring yours against empty-calorie eye candy is bound to be depressing.

Happens too when friends have fancier cars, more impressive jobs and hotter baes. FOMO fever. Not that cheddar – and the toys it can buy – don’t matter. Question is, does that stuff truly equal success?

It does if that’s how you achieve existential bliss. For most though, satisfaction comes by nurturing six clutch spheres of living.

Health

Ever tried gloating about your latest mondo promotion exhausted in a hospital bed? There’s a price to pay for constant stress of “more, faster.”

Bodies break down from fight-or-flight burnout. Psyches self-protect by screaming for numbing substances, or by major mood dampening (e.g. clinical depression). Any of which makes it a bitch to enjoy hard-earned perks.

Social engagement

We’ve all heard that it’s lonely at the top. Malarkey. Money and fame attract beaucoup hangers-on. Mostly dregs who’ll shun you if your star plummets. How do you define success if all it does is make you miserable?

Nothing replaces family, friends, loved ones and community. Sad how they’re often the first casualty when someone’s off chasing supposed success.

As for social media engagement, try balancing it with face-to-face contact. Pictures may paint a thousand words. A real-life friend’s worth a thousand virtual ones on Facebook.

Authenticity

Don’t mean to wax philosophical here, but “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?” Almost anyone can find outward success (wealth, career status) via Beelzebub bargain.

Tougher to prosper when staying ethical. Or by being authentic. Unless you’re an authentic sociopath, which case you win hands down.

Finances

Is there agreement on what having enough money means? As much as one who should be our next Prime Minister. Sufficient income means a living wage to some, millions of smackeroos to others.

Lifestyle, savings goals and rainy day funds dictate your skeleton finances. Here are some tips on how to budget without total deprivation or hibernation.

Transcendence

Keeping score of acquisitions and derring-dos isn’t hard. Sating your soul is. Standard success measures can’t create karma. Not even 5G connects to it (maybe 6G?).

What does is feeling part of something more substantial than the sum of personal achievements. Through involvement in the community, for instance. Giving back to society. Making a difference.

True contentment

Lots of ways to spark joy in your day. Watch Marie Kondo on YouTube. Guzzle that entire tub of Ben and Jerry’s. But these are only temporary highs (plus ice cream balloons thighs).

Genuine success is sustainable happiness. It’s a balance of essential spheres that shifts with your situations. At core’s a sense of personal mission, vision and values.

One thing’s certain. Working yourself to death for public plaudits ain’t the answer to how you define success. Find your own definition of success, and screw celeb selfies.