Success Is Not a Popularity Contest

Success is not a popularity contest. I heard this really amazing question:  how do you know that what you are doing is right for you?  The answer was~have someone hold your head under water until you can't take it anymore and your need to breathe overtakes you and you must surface for air. Your work should be like that, as important as your need to breathe. There is something vital about work, it is life giving when I, when you, work from a sense of purpose, a need to fulfill some kind of intensely driven internal urge to satisfy a need that only I, and you, can meet in this world, that's when we know we are on to something bigger than just working for money.  Lately I have been anxious about success and it's markers, as in how will I know I am successful? The money monster success has been feeding me lines about popularity, the number of people that show interest in me and my work and he has had me hopping from Facebook likes, to blogger, onto email amd then LinkedIn, searching for signs of success until I heard another voice that said "hey, hey you, since when did success become a popularity contest? Do your work, the work you love, the work you are good at and success will be yours". Here, the money monster success has become an ally, a friend that measures with a different yard stick. Success is services rendered well, measured by happy clients who return and I get to wake up every morning and breathe the air of being on purpose.

Hiding and comfortable

Do you play hide and seek with your career and consequently, the income it potentially can provide?  Self employment is a fun game to play, isn't it?  I mean really, calling oneself an entrepreneur sounds so very austere and self possessed and yet, behind the veil can reside any number of money monsters,   and one of them is called hiding. If you get to eat every day, sleep in a warm bed with a pretty nice roof over head and a shower with fresh clean clothes to slip into in the morning, why work or perhaps, why work harder if you can keep the things you have with about as much effort as you have always made?  Why, why oh why is the question.  Survival is cool and from the description above, if all survival items are in place, the hiding money monster would have you and I believe that that is good enough, wipe your hands together and brush the dust off and relaaaaaaaax.  Now another monster appears, comfortable, who suggests that you have arrived, all you need to do is what is comfortable, the same old same old for well, ever, or at least until you die!  So, if you have enough money to eat, sleep, shower, get dressed, do a little business, than perhaps you have arrived and that's all she wrote but then WHY screams, why is survival enough, what else is there?  What if my career is about far more then money and comfort?  What big adventure am I hiding from?  Oh, there I go, my hiding monster has now been challenged and to slay him and his lazy friend comfortable, I must figure out the more, the why...I am not the money I make, I am here with a master plan in place and I slay the hiding and comfortable money monsters as I go forth, looking for the answer to my why.

More is Never Enough

There are many money monsters prowling the earth, hunting humans. They slither sneakily into pockets, withdrawing cash and slithering away without detection from the noble and trusting humans. Sometimes the snakes take human form and this is a disconcerting experience for other humans who appear devoid of suspicion and who find it nearly impossible to attribute evil action to someone who in shape and form, resembles a beautiful human. Action screams louder than any words that are spoken of what lies in the heart of another when deception is their automatic mode of operation and lies their verbal cover for what has been done firstly in the darkness of the heart, followed by action done under the cover of night. Evil does not understand good and good cannot comprehend evil and this does not bode well for the innocent of heart. No one wants to call another evil and yet, what would we call taking and taking without ever considering the other and their condition? Perhaps action can be separated from the actor and yet, there would be no action without a mover, someone to commit to the doing part that follows the thinking part. Can a person be evil in the moment they are committing to an evil act? I think yes.  Beware of snakes, they are vicious money monsters and their hunger is insatiable, more is never enough.