Living the good life. What does success look like?

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success. Napoleon Hill

What does a successful life look like to us? Do we think public success is more important than private success?

When an opportunity comes our way are we saying yes, or are we hanging back thinking we are not ready? Do we feel we have to be shameless self-promoters or someone that hides our light under a bushel? Is there a part of us that wants to be pushed into the limelight without appearing to seek it ourselves? I am not talking about the myriad of people who what to sell us something, although their courses might help us they also might not. I feel if someone has a course to offer me on how to write a best-selling book if they really knew how to do it they’d be writing the best-selling book instead of trying to teach me how to do it.

We don’t know what will happen in our lives, what we will have to face, and what opportunities will present themselves. What we do have control of is the books we read, the thoughts we think, and the actions we take. It may take a lot of time to create a masterpiece, but time will go by whether we create it or not. The biggest masterpiece should be the life we build, the relationships we have, and the legacy we leave behind. The legacy includes our children and what we have done to make the world better for future generations.

I’ve always wondered about people who poked fun at one-hit wonders like getting one big hit is easy or something to make fun of, and the people poking fun have no hits. We often think who do we think we are to think we could do… Who do we think we are to hide our gifts, waste our gifts, or never bother to use our gifts? Years ago many people built their lives using what they had, their works of art were useful, furniture, quilts, clothing, houses, gardens, and fields of grain.

Now when we think of creativity we often think of writing, art, singing, and playing an instrument. The art of living and creating is everywhere, when I went to school we had Industrial Arts, and Home Economics because those were arts needed to build a good life and added value to people’s lives and to society.

The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself. Gilbert K. Chesterton

It seems to me we don’t appreciate the arts of living well, we encourage everyone to have higher education so they can work eighty hours a week, and make good money, but what is left to build a good life with? If our identity gets too wrapped up in a job, and something happens to the job where does that leave us? If there are too many people competing for good jobs and we can’t get one we deem good enough, where does that leave us? If looking after and raising our own children is not a worthwhile endeavor where does that leave us?

Creating a happy home is worthwhile, providing nutritious food and raising healthy children is worthwhile, and building a safe society is worthwhile. Writing a book in the evenings instead of reading to our children might not be the best use of our time. We only get a few short years when reading to our children is important, taking them to the park, and getting them involved in sports. Those years pass quickly and the relationship we built with our children lasts a lifetime.

Being a creative mother and father is creating a life for our children and raising them to be the best people they can be. When that is accomplished we have time for personal creative pursuits, and nothing we do in life is as important as raising the next generation.

We need to find balance in our lives and part of a great life is creating something for the next generation. If we are lucky we will live longer than our working days and what do we have when we quit working if that has always been the priority in our lives?

The only rock I know that stays steady, the only institution I know that works, is the family. Lee Iacocca

Any success you achieve at the expense of your family is not real success. Dave Willis

True wealth, success, and happiness can only be achieved by balancing our business life and the duty we have to our self and to our family. Joseph C. Kunz Jr.

Thank you for reading this post. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you will come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.