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“The most important decision about your goals is not what you’re willing to do to achieve them, but what you are willing to give up.” – Dave Ramsey

Success in your life is defined by you. Success in life will look different for each of us. The most important thing we can do is to create our definition of success.

The task of defining a successful life is not easy. We can quickly be swayed by what the media and our friends define as success. The question you must ask yourself is when you look back at your life from your death bed, will you be satisfied with what you created? If not what you created, what you strived for?

The lives of “successful” people vary greatly as will the paths to achieve success. Here are a few varied examples of successful people:

• Mother Teresa – Gave her entire life to care for the poor and needy in the name of Jesus. She died in 1997 with no worldly assets to speak of but had created an eternal impact that is beyond compare.
• Warren Buffett – Dedicated his life to the study of businesses and investments. Became one of the richest people in America and is becoming one of the world’s greatest philanthropists through his Giving Pledge.
• Stay at Home Parents – I won’t limit this one to mom’s, but who has a harder job than the full-time stay at home parent? There is no off button to their work. They sacrifice day in and day out to make our world a better place by pouring into their children.

Regardless of your definition of success, one thing is assured. Success requires sacrifice. To succeed, we must fix our eyes on our definition of success and drop everything that doesn’t get us closer to our vision.

Martial arts master Bruce Lee stated “It is not the daily increase, but the daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.”

Paul encourages us in Hebrews 12 to strip off every “unnecessary weight” so that we can run with endurance the race God has set before us.

God has set a different race in front of each of us. Success in our races will require us to sacrifice things we often feel that we cannot or at least should not, live without.

The key is to never sacrifice what will matter most in the end. To never sacrifice our assignment. That is the hardest part for me. I look around and see other people doing things or having things that look like so much fun. Shouldn’t I have those too?

That is probably why they put those blinders on horses. The blinders keep them from getting distracted.

In his great book titled “Essentialism”, Greg McKeown states “we can be great at anything, but not everything.”

What is your “thing”?

If you’d like some great resources to help you on your journey you can find them on our resources page at www.valuesdrivenresults.com or call me at 229.244.1559.

Curt Fowler is President of Fowler & Company and Director at Fowler, Holley, Rambo & Stalvey. He is dedicated to helping leaders create and achieve a compelling vision for their organizations.

Curt is a syndicated business writer, keynote speaker and business advisor. He has an MBA in Strategy and Entrepreneurship from the Kellogg School, is a CPA, and a pretty good guy as defined by his wife and four children.