I’m talking about defining your own success. Let’s start there. What do you consider successful? This is a personal question and no one can answer it for you. Is it having enough money to take a family vacation, pay the mortgage, buy a house, buy an SUV, pay for a wedding, retire in Hawaii, children graduating from high school, a happy spouse after 30 years of marriage, a certain position in a company, the ability to give back to the community, a museum named in your honor, a particular income threshold?

If you don’t know, you’ll have to start there. It’s like setting goals on a grand scale. Where do you want to be in ten years? What will your legacy be? Do you define success by a feeling, a mark on the map, the size of your bank account? This is for you to decide.

Once you’ve defined success for yourself, I recommend making something visual for yourself. In our house, we call it a goal board (and we use Pinterest for some of them). If you define success as having a happy family and being able to take them to Disney, your goal board can have a photo of your family in the center and the outer ring will be a photo of the plane that will take you to your destination. , a picture of Disney princesses, etc… and if part of your definition of success includes some artwork for your home and a bigger house, the board will also display a picture of your dream home, a picture of your favorite artist. , and maybe the glass vase you’ve been waiting for or a picture of the hot tub you’ll have in your backyard one day.

Goal boards serve several purposes. They serve to give depth to your dreams and bring them closer to reality. They give you something to talk about with other people who can see them. They serve as motivation on those lemon days when you feel like your dreams are out of sight. If that dream is in front of you every day or at least weekly, you are less likely to spend your money on things that deter you from reaching that goal. For example, if my definition of success includes growing my company and I have a picture of a large office with beautiful wooden desks and happy, smiling employees on my goal board, I’m less likely to spend that $4.76 on a mocha with white chocolate at Starbucks. on the way to the meeting. On the other hand, if my goals seem so far away that I can’t imagine them, I’ll reach for instant gratification more often and waste my $4.76 because for a moment it tastes delicious. It’s really about seeing the big picture: seeing what you want so vividly that you can hear it, taste it, smell it, feel it, and nothing is going to derail you. It’s about passion and longing and making it happen, because YOU are worth it!

Keep turning those lemons into lemonade – YOU deserve the sweet and refreshing drink!