What Does Making It Mean To You

Success — One word that has different values and meanings to every single individual on planet earth.

One question I hear a lot from the business forums that I set myself to attend at least once a month in 2019 is “What does Success mean to you” If you can answer that question, give yourself a pat on the back because it took me so long to realize what success meant to me.

With social media and it’s remarkable ability to make it easy for human beings to connect, it has also made so many peoples’ goals look the same.

We are all in one web constantly seeing what the next person is doing, what they just purchased and consciously or subconsciously finding ourselves also buying a brand new Audi A6 that we did not even need or had the dream to own, up until 2 mins ago when we saw it on our timeline.

What we fail to understand is that the end goal might be the same but the journey will defiantly not be alike

For a good amount of years, I was a full-time musician playing at restaurants, weddings, festivals you name it. I was not satisfied with my lifestyle though, you see after playing a show that I had set myself to play simply because I had seen some of the musicians I looked up to play there, I thought that I would feel different, that I would feel like them!

Not even knowing how they felt.

My life was constantly setting a goal to meet this particular person and play at this particular festival which I would all achieve, but I still felt empty like something was missing. Like I was not reaching my fullest potential.

At my very last performance as a full-time musician (not planned), I met an angel. I opened up to this warm lady that was also a performer at the show, and I told her how I was struggling with this music thing. Something I had never said out loud before then.

I went ahead and told her how I was constantly stressed thinking of ways to make money for food, rent, rehearsals, paying band members, etc. I was not living life! I was surviving it.

I couldn’t afford to spend a penny on myself because it always had somewhere better to be like transportation for the crew or fixing someone’s guitar and in the middle of complaining about life, she asked me “What does making it mean to you” I couldn’t answer that question at that time. You probably cannot answer that right now and guess what? it’s okay.

It took days that turned to a two months hiatus for me to be able to answer that. I sat with myself and asked the girl in the mirror. Where are we headed to darling? Following your passion is good and it’s a very healthy lifestyle until it is not working for you anymore.

Getting to Beyoncé Status takes a lot of dedication and love for what you are doing and as I said earlier. Our end term goals might look the same but the path that leads us there will never look alike.

No one would understand why I made the decision to change career paths and I understood them cause I knew they would only understand it and see it clearly if I was hooked on pills and alcohol. I choose to ignore all opinions because only I knew my situation well enough.

Things change! You can fight it or you can embrace it.

The transitioning period was the hardest. I was surrounded by friends who still had the fire for their music and kept thinking of how I was letting the 19-year-old me down because back then, I never imagined a day where I had a change of heart. I was deep in love with the Numbers and proving people wrong.

You know I honestly can’t tell which one made my headache the most and my body doubt the direction I was choosing for us. I moved back in with my sister because there was no rent money, isolated myself and made the decision on which direction to follow.

In the process of all that, I got a lot of no’s in between, rejection from schools I wanted to join, rejection to go abroad and trust me I still do not know exactly what I will settle with but what I know is that I am not moving backward.

I choose to move forward. I believe that chapter of my life has reached a dead end. I wish I could end this by saying I have found the perfect path to my very indie meaning of success and that I am a very successful doctor somewhere in Mars being paid stars and planets but that’s not the case.

I now have a clear picture of how I see myself living and do I know what the future holds?

No, but I know what the past held and I dare to trust the process fully.

So…

What does success look like in your eyes?