Hey, we’ve made it to 2023, normally by this time we want to move on and forget the previous year, we promised ourselves that this year will be different, we will be happier, experience more joy, success, love, friendship, career growth and why not: more money!

But we barely take a time to think about the year that has just gone, reflect and be thankful for whatever we have experienced. Your gratitude for the year that has just finished and for everything that came your way will catapult you into the new year with more energy and strength, gratitude and thankfulness open doors to success.

But to my point, what is success after all? How do you know and measure your success? Is it based on your goals and objectives, what you have set out to do or achieve? Will it be for the impact you had in your workplace, and how fit you were?

As we move on now let’s focus on the things we can change first of all in our lives, our self-discipline and self-leadership, our personal development, and everything else spring from what goes on inside of us. Remember, in life, we do not attract what we want but what we are.

“Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are.”

― James Allen, As a Man Thinketh

If you are setting new goals or resolutions (I would not do that), stop and think first about how you can improve yourself, and what it means to be successful. That will help you to build your intentionality for the year and also the areas which you will need to work on yourself.

I have discovered a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson recently and adapted it to my personal development and understanding of what real success is.

“What is success?
To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate the beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch Or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded!”

Now, have a moment to define, What is success to you?

― Ralph Waldo Emerson