Kick them boxes to the CURB

Happy post Valentine's Day! I hope you all had a chance to either celebrate Valentine’s weekend with your loved one, your gals, or even better with yourself and the couch along with whatever drink of your choice!  I don’t know about you but the previous me (15 plus years ago while in my 20’s! Yikes!) would have been sad, depressed, and wondered why I didn’t have someone “special” to spend my Valentine’s Day with. As I worked on myself, learned to enjoy my time, and strengthen my relationships, I realized that I can buy myself flowers, I can buy my own damn candy (ones that I actually liked) and treat myself and love myself more than anyone ever could. Essentially,

 I didn’t have to be like anyone else. 

So how does post Valentine’s Day and not feeling sorry for yourself relate to this week’s post?  It’s all about your own perspective, your own feelings, and validating yourself.  It’s about checking YOUR OWN BOXES OF SUCCESS.  Society loves to set rules, boxes, and timelines for us to meet. It’s for us to feel pressure, to conform, and for us to SETTLE even though we know that deep down, we want to explore, get a chance to know ourselves, and be free. However, society’s boxes are meant to limit and shame you for wanting to be different and limiting yourself. 

If you have been following the blog, the previous blogs focused on boundaries, assessing the relationships in your life that may be holding you back, and then challenging the status quo.  Checking your own boxes of success and challenging the status quo are closely correlated. Both discussed taking back your power and proudly proclaiming “Fuck YOU! I can do whatever the Fuck I want!”  And as I reinforced before, when you start saying this and living by this motto, not everyone will be happy for you because you get to be your true self. Especially if you are a woman; people will start to criticize, ostracize, and shame you for not wanting to follow in the footsteps of other women. Sadly, it may be other women who will question you and make you feel bad about the boxes and life decisions that you want to check off. 

To have a better understanding of society’s boxes of “success” let’s talk about them. It’s very linear, no room for “mistakes,” everyone has all the same resources.  It all starts in high school, where you graduate, find a college, know what you want to study and be (for the rest of your life), go to school, meet your significant other, date each other throughout your college years, go to school for four years, get engage after your undergrad, decide if you want to pursue graduate or post.   If you're the woman in the relationship, follow your boyfriend/fiancé and his aspirations, while putting your schooling and goals on hold because his goals are more important, put aside your dreams, and be the “woman behind every great man.” After he or you both complete your schooling, have a huge wedding, buy a house in the suburbs, and have your first kid all before the age of 30.  Whew!  And then you all live happily ever after until you get to retire in your mid 60’s and then maybe finally get to travel and live the life you want. You maybe get a good twenty years of quality of life if you are lucky.

As someone who used to work with clients who were diagnosed with either a chronic or terminal illness,  the patients that lived by society’s standard of success, often did not get to reach their golden years. They did everything “right” and sadly, did not get to fulfill their dreams; often, many were filled with regrets about how they didn’t follow their hearts, listened to everyone else's opinions,  and allowed fear and society’s rules to keep them from truly following  their own path.

I don’t know about you but when I consider society’s idea of success, it sounds damn exhausting. There is no room to rest, reflect, slow down, and really consider what it is that you desire. The path has been chosen for us. Yes, we get to choose our careers and who we decide to spend the rest of our lives with but have we been really given the opportunity to learn and know ourselves? Most people don’t ever get to know themselves because they’re too busy chasing external validations of success to make other people happy and fit in within the mold of society. We don’t get to know who we are until we actually take the time to ask “who am I?” 

You’re probably wondering how do I even check off my own boxes of success? What actually is success?   Well, girl, I am here to guide you by giving you a few guidelines to consider. Another thing I want to reiterate with you is that when you are forging your own path, REFLECTION is going to be an ongoing theme. Reflection is all about being able to sit with your own thoughts, being honest, following your intuition,  and being real with what you WANT (not just need). 

Here are some questions to help guide you: 

• Define your vision of success: This can be related to your career, relationships, health,  spiritually, time, personal development, and other areas of your life that you want to change or improve on. 

• Prioritize your goals: Once you have identified areas of your life that you want to focus on, prioritize what is most important for you. Maybe look at what area has the biggest impact on you either positively or negatively and this can be an area of improvement. 

• Be flexible and adaptable! Being flexible and being willing to adapt will be a necessity! During this journey,  you will have ups and downs but don’t give up!  We all want instant results, answers, and changes. This journey is going to challenge you in ways that you have never been challenged before and at times, you will feel like giving up but stay strong!

• Celebrate your successes: This step is so important. Remember to celebrate every win.  This can be the small or big ones.  Maybe you got out of your comfort zone and tried something that used to terrify you  or you decided to  not renew your lease so you can leave your dead end, toxic job to follow your dreams and move to your dream city! Celebrating your success can be as simple as saying “fuck yeah” or rewarding yourself with something that brings you joy.

I want to reinforce that success is not all about money, houses, vacations, cars, clothes, bags, and external luxury. If those items make you happy, certainly but I’m talking about the internal successes. This could be owning your time, not feeling rushed in the morning, not being tied down to one place, being a renter and not a homeowner, having pets, getting to work and not work when you want to, not feeling exhausted and languishing at life. Success is what works for you!

When you make the conscious decision to forge your own path in life, it will be one of the hardest and rewarding things you can do for yourself. There is no easy path, you will be tested, and there are days when you will want to give up, and go back to the comfortable old ways that kept you stuck. Girl, remember that only YOU can forge your own path in life and best of all, it’s you  who made this all happen. Once you have and live YOUR successful life, no one can take it from you. It’s all yours baby!