13. How To Define Success on Your Own Terms
What does success look like? Every person’s answer to this question will be different. In order to go from a busy, ambitious, overthinking new female leader to a more confident leader who creates success on their terms, it’s vital that you get clear on what success means for you.
When you think of people that you know who you consider successful, what makes them successful in your eyes? When you can answer this question, you’re setting the foundation for defining success for yourself. In this episode, we’re building on that foundation, so you can see what you need to do to get there for yourself.
Tune in this week to discover what success really looks like. I’m sharing some questions you can ask yourself to determine if you are on the way to your dream life, and what you might need to change in order to get on the right track to success as a new leader.
You want to become more confident in your new leadership role like, yesterday, but all those courses you want to take and books you want to read are still on your ever-growing To do list… I mean, you have deadlines to meet. That’s where I come in. I currently have a few spots open for 1:1 coaching to help you meet your goals, faster. It’s like having your very own personal trainer for your brain. Apply here to work with me.
What You’ll Learn From This Episode:
2 questions to ask yourself to define what success means to you.
How to find the characteristics that define success for you.
8 areas that make up my definition of success in career and life in general, and how to use these areas to guide you toward balance.
Why success isn’t defined by overworking to prove your worth.
How to come up with your own definition for success at this time of your life.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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Full Episode Transcript:
Today we're going to be talking about what success looks like. And I've got some questions that you can ask yourself to determine if you are on the way to your dream life.
Welcome to The Confident Female Leader podcast. A space for ambitious women stepping into leadership, who are ready to take control of their circumstances and own their magic. If you're ready to start shedding your self-doubt, come into your new identity as a leader, and stop consistently undervaluing yourself so you can feel more confident in your role, this show’s for you.
I'm Annie Framand; Psychologist, Certified Feminist Coach and Master Trainer. And I'm on a mission to help women just like you stop overworking, overthinking, and overpleasing, so you can start creating success on your terms. Ready to create your dream life? Let's go.
Hola amigas, how are you? I'm doing so good. I actually just recently discovered something called Cat TV, which is pretty much what it sounds like. It is actually on YouTube. You can Google it; it is amazing. I have my cat watch it, and he is completely transfixed, like a kid watching Barney; not gonna lie.
He just literally sits on the couch and watches his cat TV. And it's great because he's distracted, so I can do the chores and open the doors to the bedroom, which normally I don't let him go in. And he doesn't even notice. He doesn't try and run in and go in there. So, it's pretty awesome for when you need your cat to be distracted.
Now what's really cool too, and he's really cute; I’m probably going to post a reel on this. Sometimes he thinks that the birds that are on TV or the squirrels or whatnot are actually real. And so therefore, sometimes he like jumps at the TV, tries to go behind it, and looks for the squirrels. It's actually pretty interactive. It's really cool.
All right. So, I was having a conversation with my love recently about what success looks like. Obviously, our answers were actually quite different from one another. You'll notice that if you ask that question to people around you and you ask that question to yourself, it's probably going to look quite different.
And so I wanted today to chat a little bit about success. And especially since my mission is to help busy, ambitious, overthinking new female leaders become more confident in their role and also create success on their terms, right? It's embedded in my mission. So, I figured I'd spend some time today helping you define what success looks like to you.
Two different things that we can do here that I'm going to start with, and you can kind of play around with it and see which one works for you, and maybe a combination of both. So, the first thing that you're going to want to do is ask yourself, when you think of people that you know… It can be people that you know of, people that are famous that you may not know personally. Or people that are in your personal life that you know.
You want to ask yourself the question; who do you believe is successful? If you can list, let's say, 10 people that you perceive as being successful. Who are those people? You want to do that list first. And then, you want to take a look at what are some of the characteristics that they all share that they have in common.
When I did that activity, I was actually surprised because I had listed a few people that are known, right? Quite different. I had Barack Obama, for example. I had Oprah; I had Gandhi; I had Einstein. So, people that are known for different things in the world. And I also had past leaders that I worked with or coaches that I've worked with or currently work with.
Although they all do different things, what I realized is that in my mind, because I named those people and they might represent something for you. But for me, what they represent is disruption. Standing up for what they believe in. Being pillars in their fields. Not giving up. Being pioneers, breaking the mold, and doing things their way.
And also, having a clear brand, right? When you think of Gandhi, for example, what does he stand for? He'll stand for peace, right? Also, I like the whole disruption and having a clear purpose. And so, for me, what I realized is those are things that are important to me. That's how I will define success for myself. Those are some of the indicators. Is my purpose clear? Do I stand up for what I believe in, etc.? Okay, so that's one way that you can define success.
Now, another way that you can define success is what I call “the pie.” It's something that you're going to want to do. I have eight areas in here. So, you can, of course, add some, and you can subtract some that don't make sense to you or don't resonate with you. But it's just a way of looking at your life through different lenses.
I coach, of course, female leaders. And what I've noticed with the women that I coach, and that's what I've been hearing from the listeners on my podcast, as well, is there's a lot of overworking going on. Right? We talked about that in the first few podcasts, where women have been socialized to prove their worth through what they do.
And so often, as women, we're going to overwork to prove our worth. And also, that's what we think we “should” do. We want to be the good girl. We want to be the one who is perceived as doing our job. And so, what I'll find, is that often, the workplace in the chart, in the pie, will take up a lot of space, to the detriment of other areas in that woman's life.
What I invite you to do here is use these areas in the pie as a guide. And ask yourself: am I unbalanced in one area or another, based on how I define success? And also, based on how I define success at this stage in my life? Because for you, success might mean having children, but maybe you don't have children yet. Okay?
So, maybe that's an area where you're not going to be spending a lot of time. Because for you, you're not defining, right now in this stage in your life, success as having children. But you know, that maybe that's something you might want in 5 years or 10 years. And at that point, that's how you'll define success. I want you to be also very conscious of which phase of your life you're in.
Let's unpack these eight areas. And I know you, my listeners, have perfectionistic brains like I do and like my clients do. So, here I really want you to just take stock of these different areas. Maybe you want to notice where there are gaps for you. But be mindful of beating yourself up. Telling yourself that you're doing it wrong. Looking at all the gaps and telling yourself that you have to have this complex action plan of where you want to focus on.
Just for now, jot these down. And also, I have the transcript, so you don't have to be taking down a bunch of notes as you listen. You can just take a moment and review it in your mind first.
So, the first area we're going to be talking about is the career area. That is, how do you define success yourself? And again, we all define it differently. For some individuals, success is a certain title. Maybe for you, being successful means that you eventually want to make it to a VP title. Okay? That'll be something further down the road that will be a definition of success for you.
However, where you are in your life right now, when you look at your current title, where do you feel successful with the current title that you have? Now, it's not about titles; personally, that's not how I define success. But for some individuals, it is.
Career is, basically are you doing what you love? For some people, for me, personally, that is a definition, or a measure of success for myself, is, am I doing what I love? And for me, it's helping women, helping new leaders, basically work on their mindset, work on their skill set, and become more confident and better leaders.
Are you doing what you love? Do you have the job title that you want? Are you working with people that you like working with? Are you working in a job, in an organization, or in a field that you want to be working in? Right? So, what does success look like to you if you were to draw up the factors of success, like your top factors of success?
For some people, you might be visual. I know I am. So, if you have trouble answering these questions, you might want to visualize yourself, let's say, in a year. It’s close enough but far enough removed to help you define what success look like to you. What are you doing exactly? Who are you working with? What job title do you have?
The second area is related. It'll be financial, material possessions, including homes and cars, and any objects that you might own. It could be your investments, as well. For some people, that's really important, right? They'll define success in the material plane. I started with career and success because that's often how we define success.
If we show up at an event and someone often asks us, what do you do for a living? They'll often look at us, you know, did we drive to the event with a certain car? Did they see us coming out of the car? Like, what does that look like? Which area do we live in? You know, those kinds of things. So those are outward measures of success that we can see in other people.
However, for someone like me, I don't own a car, and I don't really care. Even when I owned a car, it was never a fancy car; I had a Toyota Corolla. That was never important to me. But for some of my friends, it is, right? And so, you want to look at what kind of possessions are important for you to have, if any? And how do you define success in that way? Once again, you can picture yourself in a year, right? If you had the exact possessions that you wanted, what would that look like?
Another area, another slice of the pie, is what I'll call relationships. It can be different types of relationships. It could be your partner, or it could be your family. So, it's your family of origin, and it could be your chosen family, as well. This is where we include siblings and parents, and extended family. It could include children, for example. And it is your friends, as well.
I'll include all of those relationships because, for some people like me, my friends are my family. Right? And so, the types of relationships that you have, how would you define success in that way? What do you want those relationships to look like?
How often do you want to see those people? Do you want to see your family more often than your friends? Or do you want to spend more time with your partner than with your friends or your family? Like, what does that look like to you? Right? Do you live with your partner or not, for example? Are you close to your family? Do you live in another country or another city? Is that important to you?
And also the time. What does quality time look like to you? Is that even important?
The next area is somewhat related; it is community. Now, for some individuals, community is very important. I was a yoga teacher for a couple of years, and I really identified with the yoga community. So, how do you define success? What does that look like to you in terms of community?
You know, I have some friends who are Jewish, and they're very involved in the Jewish community. I'm in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, there's a big ex-pat community here, and I'm a part of that community.
So, do you want to be part of a community? Is that important to you? Do you define success for yourself as being very involved in the community? How much time do you spend there? It could be, for example, I had some friends that have teenagers, right? And so, when they were younger, they were part of some communities of moms with young kids, and they would do activities together with their children. So, that can be another community.
Do you also want to create a community? For example, some of you already have communities that you've created. And for me, eventually, I do want to create communities of female leaders helping each other out and working together.
Now, another area is health. So, when you look at success, what does that look like to you? And you can also use other individuals; if you have trouble visualizing yourself in a year or if you have trouble answering the questions. You might think of someone who you think is healthy; what does that look like to you? And it's very different from one person to another.
I started CrossFit recently, which I love, but did not think I would. You know, for me, lifting heavy weights is part of how I define success in health currently. But that's not the case for everyone, and it was not the case for me before. So again, our definition of success can change from one life stage to another.
For some, the way that they define health will be when they go to the doctor and they get their checkup. How do they rate themselves on different ratings and different measurements? Things like their heart rate. Things like their blood pressure.
I just recently went to the doctor, actually, which is why I'm talking about this. And they did a heart test, I forget what it's called, but to measure your heartbeat and all of those kinds of things. So, are those measures important to you? How do you define success? Is it how you eat? How you drink alcohol or not? How often? Those kinds of things. And then, is it also, maybe you have a measure of how fast you run if you're a runner?
What does health look like to you? It could be mental health, of course, obviously.
Now we have another area that we want to look at; it is hobbies. Me, currently I am doing salsa, and I'm learning Spanish. Those are hobbies for me. I have traveled to 61 countries, so travel is a really important one to me. I have not done it that much recently, but it's something that really is at the top of my bucket list. To me, success is not necessarily the number of countries I've traveled to, but it's more, what are the experiences that I've lived and the people that I've met on my travels?
And so, what are those hobbies for you? Are they daily hobbies? Are they weekly, monthly, or yearly hobbies? And what does success look like to you? How much time do you want to dedicate to your hobbies?
And then, there's learning. Now, I put that one in there because learning, I've found, to be really important for myself and also for the women that I coach. And so having that growth mindset is one of the ways that I define success. Growth mindset really is learning through your experiences. Learning through your failures, and growing constantly as a human being.
It can also be listening to podcasts, reading books, having a mentor, or having a coach. Listening to different perspectives that help open up your beliefs, and bust some of your beliefs potentially. I'm a constant learner, and I've noticed that in my clients, as well. That's important in my life, and that's how I define success for myself. Am I constantly learning something? That may or may not be important to you.
Now, the last one I want to talk about is spirituality. Now, we all define this differently. For some individuals, that's not something that is important to them at all. So, this might be a category that you actually want to remove from this list. And there might be other categories I've named, as well, that are maybe not as important to you. I just wanted to give you a diversity of options.
I've become more spiritual as my life has gone on. Now, being in my late 40s, I've found myself to be more spiritual. For some of you, spirituality is religion, right? You might believe in one religion or another. And so, is this an area that is important to you or not? Do you have a daily or weekly, or monthly practice around your spirituality?
For me, it's more connecting with myself; there’s meditation involved, things like that. And for me, a successful practice is a practice that I do daily; some days, it's five minutes. Some days, it's 10 or 15 minutes. And other days, it might be longer. What does that look like to you?
Now, what I want you to do here is just take a moment to review those areas for yourself. And ask yourself the question; how are you using your energy? If you define success, for example, as having a close relationship with your friends. Maybe seeing a close friend once a week or having a zoom call with them. Are you doing that currently? And if not, why?
Are there some areas of your life that are taking up more space right now for you than you would want? So, is that career? If you're working more hours than you would like, then maybe you don't have as much time to dedicate to your family or friends or your partner, or your kids, right? Or, if you are spending that time with them, maybe it's not quality time, in the way that you define it, because you're distracted, and you're not always present.
Just take a moment to take stock of these different areas in your life without necessarily needing to do anything right now. Maybe just use it as a guide to reflect on how you define success. Asking yourself, is it balanced in the way that you want it to be balanced? Or, is it unbalanced in some way? And if so, what is the one thing, that you can do right now, to bring one of these areas into balance?
And again, it could be skewed. Some points of the pie might be bigger in some areas of your life or in some phases of your life than others, and that's completely fine. But again, it needs to be a pie that you want to eat. If you like apple pie, it needs to be an apple pie, right? And maybe you don't like rhubarb, and that's completely fine. But just make sure that you have an apple pie.
That's what I had for you today. And my friends, I am here in Mexico, living my dream life. And I want that for you, too. Now, it may not be Mexico for you; it could be anywhere else. But I really want you to know that if you're ready to transform your life, and if you are ready to move towards your dreams, towards the definition of success that you have for yourself, I've got you.
You can apply to work with me one-on-one, and I will coach you through this every step of the way. If you're loving the podcast, please share with a leader that you know.
Have a wonderful week, everyone.
Maybe you’re thinking, how did I get here? Or, I have no idea how to do this. And you don’t have time to read all the books and get all the trainings, on how to do this leadership thing. You have deadlines to meet and goals to crush. That’s where I come in. I currently have a few spots open for one-on-one coaching. It’s like having your very own personal trainer for your brain.
In just three months, I help you become more confident in your leadership role faster, and with less drama. We work on mindset to help you stop drowning under all of the tasks you have to do, and stop worrying about every email and conversation. We also work on skill sets like, “How, exactly, do I delegate this task to Sally? How do I tell Bob about all those mistakes he has been making?”
Go to www.AnnieFramand.com to book your free 30-minute consult to see if we're a good fit. See you there.
Thanks for listening to The Confident Female Leader podcast. Ready to dismantle the patriarchy with me? Come say “Hi” at AnnieFramand.com to learn more about how you can take this work deeper and apply what you're learning.
Welcome to The Confident Female Leader podcast. A space for ambitious women stepping into leadership, who are ready to take control of their circumstances and own their magic. If you're ready to start shedding your self-doubt, come into your new identity as a leader, and stop consistently undervaluing yourself so you can feel more confident in your role, this show’s for you.
I'm Annie Framand; Psychologist, Certified Feminist Coach and Master Trainer. And I'm on a mission to help women just like you stop overworking, overthinking, and overpleasing, so you can start creating success on your terms. Ready to create your dream life? Let's go.
Hola amigas, how are you? I'm doing so good. I actually just recently discovered something called Cat TV, which is pretty much what it sounds like. It is actually on YouTube. You can Google it; it is amazing. I have my cat watch it, and he is completely transfixed, like a kid watching Barney; not gonna lie.
He just literally sits on the couch and watches his cat TV. And it's great because he's distracted, so I can do the chores and open the doors to the bedroom, which normally I don't let him go in. And he doesn't even notice. He doesn't try and run in and go in there. So, it's pretty awesome for when you need your cat to be distracted.
Now what's really cool too, and he's really cute; I’m probably going to post a reel on this. Sometimes he thinks that the birds that are on TV or the squirrels or whatnot are actually real. And so therefore, sometimes he like jumps at the TV, tries to go behind it, and looks for the squirrels. It's actually pretty interactive. It's really cool.
All right. So, I was having a conversation with my love recently about what success looks like. Obviously, our answers were actually quite different from one another. You'll notice that if you ask that question to people around you and you ask that question to yourself, it's probably going to look quite different.
And so I wanted today to chat a little bit about success. And especially since my mission is to help busy, ambitious, overthinking new female leaders become more confident in their role and also create success on their terms, right? It's embedded in my mission. So, I figured I'd spend some time today helping you define what success looks like to you.
Two different things that we can do here that I'm going to start with, and you can kind of play around with it and see which one works for you, and maybe a combination of both. So, the first thing that you're going to want to do is ask yourself, when you think of people that you know… It can be people that you know of, people that are famous that you may not know personally. Or people that are in your personal life that you know.
You want to ask yourself the question; who do you believe is successful? If you can list, let's say, 10 people that you perceive as being successful. Who are those people? You want to do that list first. And then, you want to take a look at what are some of the characteristics that they all share that they have in common.
When I did that activity, I was actually surprised because I had listed a few people that are known, right? Quite different. I had Barack Obama, for example. I had Oprah; I had Gandhi; I had Einstein. So, people that are known for different things in the world. And I also had past leaders that I worked with or coaches that I've worked with or currently work with.
Although they all do different things, what I realized is that in my mind, because I named those people and they might represent something for you. But for me, what they represent is disruption. Standing up for what they believe in. Being pillars in their fields. Not giving up. Being pioneers, breaking the mold, and doing things their way.
And also, having a clear brand, right? When you think of Gandhi, for example, what does he stand for? He'll stand for peace, right? Also, I like the whole disruption and having a clear purpose. And so, for me, what I realized is those are things that are important to me. That's how I will define success for myself. Those are some of the indicators. Is my purpose clear? Do I stand up for what I believe in, etc.? Okay, so that's one way that you can define success.
Now, another way that you can define success is what I call “the pie.” It's something that you're going to want to do. I have eight areas in here. So, you can, of course, add some, and you can subtract some that don't make sense to you or don't resonate with you. But it's just a way of looking at your life through different lenses.
I coach, of course, female leaders. And what I've noticed with the women that I coach, and that's what I've been hearing from the listeners on my podcast, as well, is there's a lot of overworking going on. Right? We talked about that in the first few podcasts, where women have been socialized to prove their worth through what they do.
And so often, as women, we're going to overwork to prove our worth. And also, that's what we think we “should” do. We want to be the good girl. We want to be the one who is perceived as doing our job. And so, what I'll find, is that often, the workplace in the chart, in the pie, will take up a lot of space, to the detriment of other areas in that woman's life.
What I invite you to do here is use these areas in the pie as a guide. And ask yourself: am I unbalanced in one area or another, based on how I define success? And also, based on how I define success at this stage in my life? Because for you, success might mean having children, but maybe you don't have children yet. Okay?
So, maybe that's an area where you're not going to be spending a lot of time. Because for you, you're not defining, right now in this stage in your life, success as having children. But you know, that maybe that's something you might want in 5 years or 10 years. And at that point, that's how you'll define success. I want you to be also very conscious of which phase of your life you're in.
Let's unpack these eight areas. And I know you, my listeners, have perfectionistic brains like I do and like my clients do. So, here I really want you to just take stock of these different areas. Maybe you want to notice where there are gaps for you. But be mindful of beating yourself up. Telling yourself that you're doing it wrong. Looking at all the gaps and telling yourself that you have to have this complex action plan of where you want to focus on.
Just for now, jot these down. And also, I have the transcript, so you don't have to be taking down a bunch of notes as you listen. You can just take a moment and review it in your mind first.
So, the first area we're going to be talking about is the career area. That is, how do you define success yourself? And again, we all define it differently. For some individuals, success is a certain title. Maybe for you, being successful means that you eventually want to make it to a VP title. Okay? That'll be something further down the road that will be a definition of success for you.
However, where you are in your life right now, when you look at your current title, where do you feel successful with the current title that you have? Now, it's not about titles; personally, that's not how I define success. But for some individuals, it is.
Career is, basically are you doing what you love? For some people, for me, personally, that is a definition, or a measure of success for myself, is, am I doing what I love? And for me, it's helping women, helping new leaders, basically work on their mindset, work on their skill set, and become more confident and better leaders.
Are you doing what you love? Do you have the job title that you want? Are you working with people that you like working with? Are you working in a job, in an organization, or in a field that you want to be working in? Right? So, what does success look like to you if you were to draw up the factors of success, like your top factors of success?
For some people, you might be visual. I know I am. So, if you have trouble answering these questions, you might want to visualize yourself, let's say, in a year. It’s close enough but far enough removed to help you define what success look like to you. What are you doing exactly? Who are you working with? What job title do you have?
The second area is related. It'll be financial, material possessions, including homes and cars, and any objects that you might own. It could be your investments, as well. For some people, that's really important, right? They'll define success in the material plane. I started with career and success because that's often how we define success.
If we show up at an event and someone often asks us, what do you do for a living? They'll often look at us, you know, did we drive to the event with a certain car? Did they see us coming out of the car? Like, what does that look like? Which area do we live in? You know, those kinds of things. So those are outward measures of success that we can see in other people.
However, for someone like me, I don't own a car, and I don't really care. Even when I owned a car, it was never a fancy car; I had a Toyota Corolla. That was never important to me. But for some of my friends, it is, right? And so, you want to look at what kind of possessions are important for you to have, if any? And how do you define success in that way? Once again, you can picture yourself in a year, right? If you had the exact possessions that you wanted, what would that look like?
Another area, another slice of the pie, is what I'll call relationships. It can be different types of relationships. It could be your partner, or it could be your family. So, it's your family of origin, and it could be your chosen family, as well. This is where we include siblings and parents, and extended family. It could include children, for example. And it is your friends, as well.
I'll include all of those relationships because, for some people like me, my friends are my family. Right? And so, the types of relationships that you have, how would you define success in that way? What do you want those relationships to look like?
How often do you want to see those people? Do you want to see your family more often than your friends? Or do you want to spend more time with your partner than with your friends or your family? Like, what does that look like to you? Right? Do you live with your partner or not, for example? Are you close to your family? Do you live in another country or another city? Is that important to you?
And also the time. What does quality time look like to you? Is that even important?
The next area is somewhat related; it is community. Now, for some individuals, community is very important. I was a yoga teacher for a couple of years, and I really identified with the yoga community. So, how do you define success? What does that look like to you in terms of community?
You know, I have some friends who are Jewish, and they're very involved in the Jewish community. I'm in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, there's a big ex-pat community here, and I'm a part of that community.
So, do you want to be part of a community? Is that important to you? Do you define success for yourself as being very involved in the community? How much time do you spend there? It could be, for example, I had some friends that have teenagers, right? And so, when they were younger, they were part of some communities of moms with young kids, and they would do activities together with their children. So, that can be another community.
Do you also want to create a community? For example, some of you already have communities that you've created. And for me, eventually, I do want to create communities of female leaders helping each other out and working together.
Now, another area is health. So, when you look at success, what does that look like to you? And you can also use other individuals; if you have trouble visualizing yourself in a year or if you have trouble answering the questions. You might think of someone who you think is healthy; what does that look like to you? And it's very different from one person to another.
I started CrossFit recently, which I love, but did not think I would. You know, for me, lifting heavy weights is part of how I define success in health currently. But that's not the case for everyone, and it was not the case for me before. So again, our definition of success can change from one life stage to another.
For some, the way that they define health will be when they go to the doctor and they get their checkup. How do they rate themselves on different ratings and different measurements? Things like their heart rate. Things like their blood pressure.
I just recently went to the doctor, actually, which is why I'm talking about this. And they did a heart test, I forget what it's called, but to measure your heartbeat and all of those kinds of things. So, are those measures important to you? How do you define success? Is it how you eat? How you drink alcohol or not? How often? Those kinds of things. And then, is it also, maybe you have a measure of how fast you run if you're a runner?
What does health look like to you? It could be mental health, of course, obviously.
Now we have another area that we want to look at; it is hobbies. Me, currently I am doing salsa, and I'm learning Spanish. Those are hobbies for me. I have traveled to 61 countries, so travel is a really important one to me. I have not done it that much recently, but it's something that really is at the top of my bucket list. To me, success is not necessarily the number of countries I've traveled to, but it's more, what are the experiences that I've lived and the people that I've met on my travels?
And so, what are those hobbies for you? Are they daily hobbies? Are they weekly, monthly, or yearly hobbies? And what does success look like to you? How much time do you want to dedicate to your hobbies?
And then, there's learning. Now, I put that one in there because learning, I've found, to be really important for myself and also for the women that I coach. And so having that growth mindset is one of the ways that I define success. Growth mindset really is learning through your experiences. Learning through your failures, and growing constantly as a human being.
It can also be listening to podcasts, reading books, having a mentor, or having a coach. Listening to different perspectives that help open up your beliefs, and bust some of your beliefs potentially. I'm a constant learner, and I've noticed that in my clients, as well. That's important in my life, and that's how I define success for myself. Am I constantly learning something? That may or may not be important to you.
Now, the last one I want to talk about is spirituality. Now, we all define this differently. For some individuals, that's not something that is important to them at all. So, this might be a category that you actually want to remove from this list. And there might be other categories I've named, as well, that are maybe not as important to you. I just wanted to give you a diversity of options.
I've become more spiritual as my life has gone on. Now, being in my late 40s, I've found myself to be more spiritual. For some of you, spirituality is religion, right? You might believe in one religion or another. And so, is this an area that is important to you or not? Do you have a daily or weekly, or monthly practice around your spirituality?
For me, it's more connecting with myself; there’s meditation involved, things like that. And for me, a successful practice is a practice that I do daily; some days, it's five minutes. Some days, it's 10 or 15 minutes. And other days, it might be longer. What does that look like to you?
Now, what I want you to do here is just take a moment to review those areas for yourself. And ask yourself the question; how are you using your energy? If you define success, for example, as having a close relationship with your friends. Maybe seeing a close friend once a week or having a zoom call with them. Are you doing that currently? And if not, why?
Are there some areas of your life that are taking up more space right now for you than you would want? So, is that career? If you're working more hours than you would like, then maybe you don't have as much time to dedicate to your family or friends or your partner, or your kids, right? Or, if you are spending that time with them, maybe it's not quality time, in the way that you define it, because you're distracted, and you're not always present.
Just take a moment to take stock of these different areas in your life without necessarily needing to do anything right now. Maybe just use it as a guide to reflect on how you define success. Asking yourself, is it balanced in the way that you want it to be balanced? Or, is it unbalanced in some way? And if so, what is the one thing, that you can do right now, to bring one of these areas into balance?
And again, it could be skewed. Some points of the pie might be bigger in some areas of your life or in some phases of your life than others, and that's completely fine. But again, it needs to be a pie that you want to eat. If you like apple pie, it needs to be an apple pie, right? And maybe you don't like rhubarb, and that's completely fine. But just make sure that you have an apple pie.
That's what I had for you today. And my friends, I am here in Mexico, living my dream life. And I want that for you, too. Now, it may not be Mexico for you; it could be anywhere else. But I really want you to know that if you're ready to transform your life, and if you are ready to move towards your dreams, towards the definition of success that you have for yourself, I've got you.
You can apply to work with me one-on-one, and I will coach you through this every step of the way. If you're loving the podcast, please share with a leader that you know.
Have a wonderful week, everyone.
Maybe you’re thinking, how did I get here? Or, I have no idea how to do this. And you don’t have time to read all the books and get all the trainings, on how to do this leadership thing. You have deadlines to meet and goals to crush. That’s where I come in. I currently have a few spots open for one-on-one coaching. It’s like having your very own personal trainer for your brain.
In just three months, I help you become more confident in your leadership role faster, and with less drama. We work on mindset to help you stop drowning under all of the tasks you have to do, and stop worrying about every email and conversation. We also work on skill sets like, “How, exactly, do I delegate this task to Sally? How do I tell Bob about all those mistakes he has been making?”
Go to www.AnnieFramand.com to book your free 30-minute consult to see if we're a good fit. See you there.
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