Success isn’t what we’ve been told.

Congratulations on moving forward on the road to success. If you are reading this this, you are such a person, because you are someone who seeks to learn from life.

Life is intended to be about “What do I learn from this?” instead of “Oh, no; I did it wrong!” 

A great error we make is to measure our success/value/accomplishments with the yardstick of the expectations of the world at large.

The greatest measure is to know within ourselves that what we have offered was given with the best of intentions that we understood at the time. When we offer harmonious energy, intention, and creative ideas to the world, it creates effects far beyond this earthly dimension. It permeates all of consciousness.

Years ago I studied handwriting analysis. The first thing I learned about my handwriting indicated that I didn’t spend time planning, but instead preferred to follow my intuition; I was forward thinking, did not carry the past with me, and exceedingly optimistic.

But it made for some terribly messy papers and poor penmanship. I inexplicably started class notes toward the center of the page, ran out of room at the end of the line and then completed the thought in the margins with lines and arrows connecting it all.

Horrible! I’d start writing a letter neatly but as I revved up into the message I’d forget and my writing became messy again. I tried to be neat, to have perfectly even left margins, to put the dot over the “i” instead of way over into the next word – honest! I tried to make my lines straight but they insisted on wandering upward. I gave up. I decided it was better to be a possibility thinker than to have neat handwriting.

Life is like that. It’s better to be you at your authentic best, then to try to fit some “ideal” that would rob you and the world of your unique gifts.

As a fellow soul traveler, I want to experience your enthusiastic attempts instead of an image of perfection that is empty of joy. Forget failure and focus on the advice of Norman Vincent Peale, “Throw your heart over the fence and the rest will follow.”

You cannot be a failure in life. As a soul living a human experience, you are not the human experience. You are not the relationship that is breaking up around you, or the person your birth family erroneously thinks you are or expects you to be, or the debt you accumulated that is throwing you into bankruptcy.

You are an individualized expression of the divine energy of the universe, and as such are never, ever! judged by human measure.

Do the “highest and best” you can in each given moment, learn from what doesn’t work, celebrate what does work, and move forward with an ever increasing intention to evolve.

You already are, you know, or you wouldn’t be still reading this article. Go for it!