I've been thinking a lot about how we should constantly redefine and question the word success.
Most of us have it ingrained in our heads that the concept of success is the culmination of all things we aspire to do or be. The ultimate recognition.
It seems that if we aren't "successful" by the way society describes it, what are we then? Are we constantly failing? Constantly battling the experience we are having right now? Constantly in dissatisfaction, longing for the validation that we think success will bring?
Eckart Tolle says in his book " What the world doesn't tell - because it doesn't know - is that you cannot become successful. You can only be successful. Don't let a mad world tell you that success is anything other than a successful present moment"
My letter today simply raises the question, "How much weight do we carry of the word success?" when it's concept is not even the reality, it's just a conventional definition. What is success anyway to you? What part of you identifies with becoming successful, as society describes it, and what is behind this identification? Can we release these concepts and focus on our own experience?
What if we can live according to how we define it. For some people it might be the freedom they have in their lives, for others it could be a dear group of friends or a job they enjoy. For me, particularly, success lays on my morning walks, when I cook, when I share these teachings.
It doesn't mean we don't have goals, we don't work enthusiastically and with clarity. The difference is the drive behind it, the intention to what we are doing which translates into a quality, an awareness. We are in the present moment, not in the projection of the future.
If anything we are creating with our moment by moment, the success we define and aspire to achieve on our own terms. Not on anybody else's terms.
With love,
Mariana
