Even more importantly, when will you know you have achieved it? These are two critical questions that we must have reasonable insight into as we move toward our destiny in life.

As I have traveled around the world for the past 20 years giving speeches and seminars on a variety of topics for my clients, I have noticed a very intriguing philosophy that many people use as their benchmark for success.

Most people in life see their success as grounded in some future event, relationship or set of circumstances – or the past, with all its achievement and history. Future dreams and desires and/or past accomplishments.

Future plans and/or past accolades. Future projects and/or past gains. Future relationships and/or past lessons learned.

I, too, have been guilty many times in my life of deluding myself that I had arrived or would soon arrive at some mystical point or place in the future. I saw success as an unknown or vague uncertainty depending on the whims of management decisions, corporate outcomes, relationship activities and/or the persistent, yet relentless, passage of time. I moved through life’s mistakes, failures and opportunities, pulled into life’s hopes, dreams and fantasies toward new horizons.

My activities in the present, for example writing this article, always had to have some specific connection to some “outcome.” These future frozen moments in time represented the timeline of my life. A series of wins and losses registered on the calendar of the universe. Three vital questions that people continually ask themselves are: “What is my Destiny in life?” “How will I achieve it and when will I know if I am on the right road?” Success is not in your future. It is not an accumulation of past accomplishments. People smarter than I have been defining success for centuries. If you didn’t like one person’s definition, there was always another that you could use as your guiding philosophy through life. Success for many is an illusive transitory process, leaving behind empty memories, void of their purpose and value when lived.

For these people, success is in the eye of the beholder. It depends on other’s acceptance, recognition and praise. They are in a race to prove their value and worth to the world. Even though I used many of these outside-in definitions for years as my platform for success, I was often left with the haunting feeling that there was still something missing in my life. It was only in the past few years that I began to think rather than memorize. Success is to me not the illusion of fleeting daily successful activities, decisions and/or projects, but the ability to relish the joy, the sense of gratitude and opportunity to be able to live “inside out” rather than “outside in.”

Tim Connor
http://www.timconnor.com