What does being successful mean to you?

At a recent Three steps to a Success based Mindset workshop in Barcelona I spoke with a group of founders and entrepreneurs to find out what success meant to them, after all, success it is what everyone wants right?

What was interesting was many described their ideas of success as something tangibly ahead of them in their startups. A future when they could enjoy more of the financial rewards as a consequence of having grown a business. Some translated the idea of success to a time when they will have realised their life’s purpose and for others it meant greater choice on how they live and work.

The intention of the workshop was to challenge their current ideas about success as a future reality and offer them an alternative, more enabling perspective. You see I’ve come to look upon success as not something you can become in the future but something you can only be in the present moment. That probably seems counter to all that we are led to believe today, but I disagree with the idea that success is out there waiting to be found through the future achievement of our hard work and completion of goals.

Success is an inside job?

The realisation that success is an inside job occurs when you look upon success as being something experiential; you can only experience being successful in the present moment, in the now. There really is no other time to experience it or anything else other than in the present moment of NOW because the future is just a projection.

What we tend to more commonly associate future success with are the material reflections of that experience, that could be any number of outcomes related to our desires for our businesses or personal situations. For some, their idea of personal or professional success is reinforced through their followers, gaining recognition from within their social and professional communities for what they have accomplished. None of which is wrong, but it means that the measure by which one might gauge a sense of achievement and potentially of their wellbeing are affected by the opinions and praise of other people.

There is no denying that material reflections are real outcomes, made possible from the achievement of certain goals and objectives but they are not the experience of success, they are simple consequences.

Who decides when you are successful, is it you when you recognise it as an inner experience or is it when someone tells you that you are successful?

To shift to a more enabling awareness you could start to view success as a progressive experience, increasing in intensity by consistently doing the little things consistently well over time. The more successful we feel in any given movement is a reflection of our inner sense of well-being or State as I describe it in The Conscious Sale. This in turn drives our sense of what is possible, encouraging us to accomplish greater achievements, in-turn increasing our inner sense of success.

In short, we can own and operate the tools to accomplish a success based mindset, to be more consistent in our accomplishments and successful outcomes, which arise from our focused intentions and set goals.

Here are some ways in which you can align with the experience of success right now.

1. Be consistent, consistency is a fundamental attribute shown in the behaviour of successful people. Just showing up each day as the same positively orientated agent of possibility builds a successful foundation of character. Character that constantly communicates to those around you and reinforces to your subconscious self who you are being and how you handle whatever life throws at you.

2. Recognise there is a quality flowing into the activity or task. The practice of focused attention to each and everything you do will have an accumulating effect. It is not surprising then that the greater the success in the little things the more likely you are to attract success in the larger things that you do.

3. Be aware of the success in what you accomplish throughout your day, each and every day. Whether it’s actively listening to a client, writing the notes up from the meeting, or maybe presenting your ideas; anything and everything that you are doing is in the now, you can be successful in that moment.

4. Find flow, the feeling of accomplishment will continue to grow within you, adding greater depth to your confidence to undertake and excel in ever greater challenges. From that space a deepening sense of enjoyment, which can be described as flow starts to develop.

5. Approach everything you do with the sense of focus, clarity and purpose. Sense the quality in the good work you do. But it doesn’t mean that you give little fist pump and say “yeah! Look what I’ve done “ Just have a inner knowing that you have put meaning into it, because you can, because you wanted to, because you are building on something larger than for recognition. In that moment when you’re working in that capacity, you are being in true service to your client. That is authenticity, and that is powerful in building successful relationships.

6. Let go of the need for pats on the back, from the world around you. Let each of your successes build upon the last, growing larger, silently without ego. This actually speaks louder than if you made a big deal of it and will be far more noticeable. The success you started off thinking that you wanted whether it’s money or recognition, may become a secondary goal and that reward happens as a consequence to being in service to what your focused on creating.

Success is found in each moment, in every activity. Make your success a knowing that your performance has within it a quality imbued into every aspect of the work you have undertaken.

You can be successful right now in this present moment simply by focusing your attention and ability on the task at hand. That is why success is an inside job.

If you would like to learn more about harnessing the tools to build more consistency in your business and sales success check out The Conscious Sale.