Written by
As a career coach and researcher of working women’s work-life issues, I’ve embarked on a national research study on Women Succeeding Abundantly, in order to learn first-hand the essential ingredients in thinking, beliefs, choices, and behaviors that create and maintain “knock your socks off success” in women. I want to learn from women who can raise their hands today and say, “Yes! I feel tremendously successful on my terms, and am able to live life joyfully and with great gusto.”
Why do I want to study this topic?
Because from where I sit there are precious few people on earth today who achieve a continual state of “feeling” successful, who know down to their toes that they are successful and don’t need external measures to validate that. And there are even fewer people who see their lives as a fantastic adventure in success rather than in failure.
I’m drawn to learn as much as I can from women who say “Yes I Am” abundantly successful, because I believe that when we feel successful in terms that are personal, meaningful, and self-defined, then we’re living a grand life of passion, power, and purpose, and having a ball. We’re following the dictates of our own values, beliefs and priorities, and we’re shaping our destinies as want them, not as our prior conditioning, training and cultural influences taught us are “right.”
I’m also compelled to conduct this study for a deeply personal reason – because my own relationship with abundant success over my lifetime has been spotty at best. My experience of abundant success can be characterized as this:
1) I believe in the inherent right and capability of EVERY human being to live an abundantly successful life
2) I feel abundantly successful, but only SOMETIMES
3) I’ve glimpsed at achieving financial abundance, and want more of it (it’s wonderful)
4) I continue to be challenged in achieving that beautiful equilibrium between setting heart-aligned goals and going for them with everything I’ve got, but not being crushed when they don’t come to pass
5) While understanding the “Secret” and the Law of Attraction have been helpful to me and others, the ways in which they are being taught are incomplete at best, misguided and incorrect at worst.
6) I want to teach myself, and in turn, thousands of other women, new and exciting ways to create– and sustain– an experience of internal and external abundance and success
The first step I’m taking is to immerse myself in new learning. The second step is to reshape what I hear into a model that makes sense for me, and fits what I know to be true.
What I know to be true right now is that financial abundance is not the only way through which one can feel abundantly successful. However, in our society which is immersed in the energy of money, if you want financial abundance and have not been successful achieving it, then an internal feeling of success is virtually impossible– unless you intentionally create a shift within you that, in turn, allows for greater success.
So I’ve started there, understanding women’s relationships with money, success, achievement, recognition – the outer measures. I’m then peeling the layers down to look at the inner experiences and practices that abundantly successful women embrace and nurture to access their own power and success.
What is Necessary for a Successful Life Experience?
Here’s what I’ve learned in conducting this study and guiding my own life and those of my clients to greater success:
1. Nurture success
Without a consistent nurturing of your own internal feelings of success, the external measures of success won’t come to you (or if they do, they’ll be fleeting, come with struggle and strain, or feel deeply disappointing when they arrive).
2. Feel What You Long For
After generating an internal feeling and experience of success or embracing the possibility of improvement in your life situation — and resonating from that positive feeling place — we must then understand what we truly want to create in our lives, and why we want it.
3. Take Heart-Aligned Action
After knowing what we want to create, we must take action towards creating that reality. But take action only if it feels good, right, heart-and-soul aligned, and is connected to who you really are.
4. Love the Process
Then, as life unfolds, we must learn to love the process of transition, change, and uncertainty, and get out of our own way of habitual attachment to what it “should” and “must” look like.
Make sense?
So let’s start now by getting in closer touch with our own internal relationship with success.
Ask yourself these questions today:
1) How do I personally define “abundant success”?
2) Deep down, do I truly want abundant success, or does the idea of it intimidate or scare me? If so, what keeps me from wanting it?
3) How often do I feel successful in life and work?
4) If I feel less than successful most of the time, what specifically contributes to that “less-than-successful” evaluation of myself?
5) Finally, ask yourself, “What can I do today to begin to “feel” more successful internally. What steps can I take to remember and connect with all the ways that I HAVE been successful throughout my life and today, and to embrace more success going forward?”
I’d LOVE to hear your thoughts about your experiences with abundant success, and what you know to be true about you and success. Please share your insights on my success blog post at http://www.elliacommunications.com/blog/?p=553 – teach usThank you for sharing, and here’s to our many breakthroughs to abundant success!
About The Author
Kathy Caprino, MA, is a work-life expert and author of Breakdown, Breakthrough: The Professional Woman’s Guide to Claiming a Life of Passion, Power, and Purpose (Berrett-Koehler, Nov. 08). A national champion for professional women in crisis, Caprino is a trained psychotherapist, specialized career and life coach, and sought-after writer and speaker on women’s issues. She is founder and president of Ellia Communications, Inc. and a former corporate VP, who today openly shares her own story of breakdown—and breakthrough.
The Law of Attraction Will NEVER Work For You Unless You Can Overcome These Two Problems…
Mail this post
