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Ladies, it's ok to be successful!

Writer's picture: Sarah VaughanSarah Vaughan

 

When was the last time you felt successful? When did you last think to yourself, ‘that was really good, well done me?" What did it look like? What did it feel like? Where were you? Stay in that moment for a while.

 

A recent experience for me, was in a yoga class. I only started learning yoga in January, after promising myself I would learn it for years and never making time to do it. Each month we learn a new series of poses that “flow” from one to the other until they become one seamless movement… that’s the idea anyway!

 

I love these classes, but every part of yoga is completely new to me so I’m not an expert at it by any stretch of the imagination. However, on Tuesday, I managed to do (almost) all of the routine with relative ease, without falling over and without forgetting half of the poses! Hooray! I felt a lovely warm sense of achievement and I soaked in every bit of it on that mat! Success!

 


Yoga goals! This is definitely not me... yet!

Yesterday I was listening to the very ‘successful’ Happy Place Podcast, which is so successful, it has its own wellness festival and branding and reaches millions of people every week. On the podcast, Fearne Cotton and Dawn Franch, two ladies, who I admire very much and two ladies who are certainly successful in many ways, were chatting about the joys of failure.

 

It’s such a British thing to do, to talk about all the ways we have failed at things, and almost sometimes put on some rose-tinted glasses and look back on a really hard time with an element of nostalgia. I have no issues with failing whatsoever, i do it often and I enjoy pushing through failures to find solutions and new ways forward, but I also equally enjoy moments of success.

 

In the podcast Fearne and Dawn, in their very lovely British way, were discussing how they only ever learnt from their failures, and that they never really learned anything from success.

 

 

Dawn: “We're not learning probably very much at all from the good moments, the happy moments, the perfect moments. They're lovely and they feel fantastic. But the learning is when you're on your knees. The learning is when you've looked back and you're cringing and you can't bear it. That's when you make a decision to go, I won't do that again….I'm not sure what you learn from success.”

 

Fearne: “Not very much at all.”

 

I was yelling into the ether, to two highly successful women, who were talking on one of the top podcasts in the country, “You are learning how to be successful! You are learning what it feels like when something actually goes to plan. You are learning how to hold space for successful moments and how to enjoy them. You two are definitely learning how to hold and manage wealth, and you are also learning how to hold and manage all of the emotions that come with success, accepting that maybe not everything has to go badly in order to be liked. And most importantly you are learning that success is possible.”

 

Sometimes it’s okay to say, “this bit of my day, or this thing I did was not a total disaster, and it actually went well. I was the one who made it successful and that’s a good thing.”

 

Playing down your success is a bit like when someone compliments you on your outfit and you say, “Oh this old thing, I’ve had it for years,” or, “It was in the sale.”

 

Why not just say, “Thank you, I like it too.”

 

In the same way, when something goes well, it’s ok to say, “that went well, I worked hard and that was good – maybe not perfect, but close enough.”  Or you could say, “I had a good day that day, it was fun, and I was successful.”

 

It’s ok to fail too, of course. There’s much to be learned from failure and it’s what drives us to find solutions and answers to problems, but don’t be scared of success.

 

There is much to learn from success and it’s ok for you, YES YOU, to be successful on every level. You don’t need to apologise and stay small. Celebrate your successes and encourage others to do the same. Imagine a world we, especially those socialised as female, were not afraid to be successful, where we just believed in ourselves and understood that we are f’ing incredible! We need to reframe what success looks like and accept that we can learn so much from all of it.

 

Here's a little activity for you. I want you to really think about what success looks like for you. Grab some paper and a pen and write down the answers to these questions. Take your time to really think, keep coming back to it.

 

  • If money was no issue, what would your dream life look like? Don’t hold back! Really let your imagination run wild.

 

  • What are all the things that successful you would do?

 

What would you eat? What would you drink? What would you wear? How would you smell? How would you walk/ stand? What would you read? What would you watch? What would you listen to? Where would you live?  Where would you go? How much time would you spend working? How much would you charge for an hour of your time? Who would you spend time with? How would you feel? What would you think?

 

  • What things in your life are most important to you? What do you value the most?

 

When you have done this, and really thought about these questions, I would like you to make a small change in your life, choose one or two of the things that you would do as a “successful person,” and start doing them. Eat some better food, make some better choices, go to yoga once a week. And each time you do that thing, congratulate yourself on your success. Get used to that feeling.

 

Once you have got to grips with one or two things, add in another, and another until you start believing that you are actually quite successful. Once you have realised you are capable of success, you can start working towards your dream. This is a long-term project, I won’t happen overnight, but change is possible and so is success. I believe that you can do it!

 

Don’t confuse success with perfection. They are two very different beasts. Perfection is not real or sustainable, it’s a snapshot of life on an Instagram square, a curated, filtered moment in time. I’ve followed many ‘influencers’ who portray perfection as success, but when you start to look closely you find that this is not the case. All of them have messy parts of their lives, swept under the rug (literally), to convince you to buy into their lifestyle. It’s all marketing.

 

Real success is messy, a bit chaotic, has had some elements of failure, possibly a sprinkling of luck and is glorious in all of its imperfections. Success to me feels like snippets in a very long journey. It’s not really an end goal, it’s just remembering to enjoy the good parts of life and learning that I, like you am worthy of every type of success.





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