Society measures success in terms of tangibles: cash, career, condo, car. The outward trappings of wealth. But how would YOU define success? Lets say you had all the riches in the worlds, then what?

how would you spend your time?

what would fulfill you?

how would you want to feel on a constant basis?

Before you can achieve BIG dreams, you need to be who you want to be already. A top athlete wins races through already being a winner. Before he gets onto the starting block, he already has the ability, strength, agility, fitness and speed to win. Our dreams are the same, yet we approach them with the intention of 'seeing what happens'. We set goals and sort of haphazardly wind our way towards them thinking that once we reach the finish line - then we will be successful, or not. With this sort of mentality, no wonder most of us fall short!

Think like an athlete. In order to reach your goals and be fulfilled, what do you need to be training for now? Only when you have mastered the running can you truly win a race.

What sort of training am I referring to? What is your measurement of success? What would you need in your life to be 100% fulfilled? Think carefully about this. We usually knee jerk with 'more money', or 'more love' but quantify it. How much money, how much love will make you 100% fulfilled? We normally want money to DO something else. Perhaps we dream of being financially independent so that we can chase another dream - imagine someone gives you 1 billion dollars, what would you do with it? Perhaps you'd blow it on the condo and car and holidays...but then what? Deep down, we are not lazy people. Sitting around on holiday for the rest of our lives would kill us with boredom! We are, I think, all striving for something else, some inner journey.

For example, I measure my success by:

How much joy I feel from my work I want to spend my time only on things that I am passionate about, that means my family, my coaching, my community website, so I measure my success on how much time I spend doing solely those sort of activities.

How much love I can give to others this fulfills me, how much I can give relates to how in balance and how in tune I am with my own needs, when I am run down or doing things I am not passionate about I feel drained and I have little to give others, so its a pretty easy measurement of success!

How content I am feeling on a minute to minute basis I love feeling content! I want to achieve this on a constant basis, so I measure my success on how consistently I feel this during my day.

Training for success means you need to know your success criteria, and then spending a good part of each day doing just that.

Daily I think about these criteria, and daily I am tested. I have days when I feel terrible, or days when I yell at others instead of love them, or days when I can't wait to finish my days work and get some respite. Every one of these days prompts me to ask myself how I can get back to my training regiment, tomorrow is another day. I DON'T ask myself "why did I fail", or "why am I so hopeless", or "why can't I do this". Eliminate 'why' from your questioning if you can. Stick to 'how' questions, they are much more empowering. Ask yourself "how can I increase my 'success' score every day?", or "how can I do things differently to increase the amount of success I feel in my life?"

The way I see it, if I keep training and focusing on my 3 success criteria, I will become more and more proficient. Imagine the space I will be in when I am 100% content, loving, and joyful. WOW! And as I progress, I am increasing that percentage every day, every year. So even now, I am already content, loving and joyful- not 100 percent but some percent, and I am consciously aware of the days and moments, so that brings me even more joy! Day by day, week by week.

Think of the alternative. Just say I had some goals (some races I wanted to win) - I wanted to become financially independent so I worked hard at a well paid job (that I didn't really like, but hey! It pays the bills!) And decided to retire at 60 and then follow my real passion of coaching. I decided that all good things come to those who wait, so every day I went to work and did a job I didn't like -justifying to myself that when I'm 60, I'll be happy. Its a scary thought that instead of having all these many years of growing success (contentment, loving others, joyful work), I could be waiting until I hit 60.

Some of the training will require big changes - perhaps you need to change your job, your relationships, your way of relating with others, your habits, your decisions. Sometimes you'll simply need to be aware of your success criteria and make small changes. During one of my workshops, one of my participants shared that she loved watching sunsets, but never had the time. She reasoned that if she could watch just one or two beautiful sunsets a week - it would dramatically increase her level of success. What a fantastic realization, and so easy to do! Of course she would need to be firm - walk out the house and go to a place to rest and watch, perhaps face an annoyed and hungry family later etc. But it is barriers like this that cause us to wait for success in the first place - other people take over our lives, and we wait until we are 60 to reclaim what is rightfully ours.

Do the training, define your success criteria and just start doing it, little by little, day by dayyoull be amazed at the results!