Earnest Hemingway said, “Write your best, and finish what you start.”
I want us to apply this to what we do, so:
Do the best you can, and finish what you start
Living and doing our best comes from what we are working towards.
What are you working towards?
Successful people are successful not because of an accomplishment, but because they were or are working towards something meaningful to them.
This means success can only be defined by the individual person. If I want my podcast to hit 50,000 downloads this year, and I’m working towards that, it may not mean anything to someone who is not interested in me nor personal growth. They couldn’t care less. But that cannot define me.
Understand this too, that success is a process. It comes from doing our best working toward something, it is celebrated if accomplished, but it is happening and in the works when we are in the middle of going for it.
I feel successful when I’m working towards the goal, so producing a video almost daily to add to the podcast increases the chances of reaching more people with my thoughts. So the working toward making the videos and talking is the small “Kaizen” accomplishments that I can look back and say that, “I’ve made enough videos, or podcast episodes to watch daily for an entire year!”, instead of that one video to go viral.
Living your best life now is your ikigai, and every moment you reflect on you will see that the entire time has been a success.
Be proud of that!