My take on ‘Success’!

 

Everyone wants to be successful these days: you and me!

But after a lot of reflection, I realized that success is very very personal and custom made for each one of us. There is no one parameter for “success”.

It’s something everyone wants to achieve but if you are not careful and self-aware you may end up chasing someone else’s parameter for success.

And today I want to share with you a few thoughts which helped me realize this!

There was this phase of my life where I wanted to earn more and more money, my responsibilities were growing and I thought the faster I earnt money – the better I will be in life. For this, I took up a very challenging job which sucked almost 13-14 hrs of my day. Being the lady of the house, the remining waking hours went in doing household chores and sleeping. I felt like I had no life left, I started falling ill very frequently. I was so worked up that soon there came a point that come Sunday evening I would start feeling nauseous and a very deep feeling of despair fell on me as if my life will soon be over – A case of extreme Monday blues. I had no time and energy to do anything but work over the weekdays. Money was flowing in at a fast and rapid pace, but so were medical bills and emotional outbursts.  

It was in this weak moment, I realized I can’t go on like this with my life. I had become a walking and talking misery person. So, I quit my job. Yes, I was very fortunate that I could do that because I had a loving husband who readily took the onus of running the house (really very grateful for that!).

Then I entered the phase of unemployment – initially it felt so good after the above phase of my life! My days were blissful with good 9 hrs sleep, 2 odd hrs after doing household chores in the morning and then I had the whole day left to pursue whatever I wanted to. I read books, saw loads of movies, Netflix and Amazon Prime browsing the whole day was a dream come true. But after the initial euphoria died down, I realized I don’t really have the luxury to casually shop during a Myntra Sale, I can’t really go and have my favorite Starbucks coffee! Opps, what had I done? Since the time I had started working, for last 10 yrs., I never had to think twice before spending money on myself. But things were different now, what I would spend would be my husband’s hard-earned money! I was left with only a lot of free time. But I felt that anything I would want to do with my free time needed money like learning a new skill, casually going to a café!

To top this unemployed phase and add to the misery - I fell majorly ill! Dengue physically drained me out for a month or so. Due to a lot of compulsory resting, I worked myself up so much that I started losing my peace of mind thinking of all sorts of negative thoughts of being stuck in a limbo in life, of being a failure. Both my physical and mental health were in shambles. Fortunately, I had a counsellor in my house, who helped me come out of that depressive state of mind.

It was during this phase of my life that I realized with utmost conviction that success for me is really the sweet spot between health, wealth and good relations! Any one aspect missing and I am  miserable.  

So I have come up with this formula for Success: 

Good Health + Decent Wealth + Nurturing Relationships = Success

P.S: What is your formula for Success? Eager to know!😊