05 Jan Counting Your Successes

On the surface, the concept of “reap what you sow” is simple. You get out what you put in. It’s a simple concept, but life isn’t always that simple. Sometimes harsh weather destroys what should have been your best harvest. Sometimes you don’t get the job when you had an amazing interview. Sometimes you just don’t get the results you worked for, and you think you’ve failed.

Success comes in many forms, and a lot of the time it comes in ways that might not look much like success. You might have failed at something, but most of the time it’s that failure that opens you to a new opportunity on your road to success. In other words, just because something didn’t turn out as planned doesn’t mean your life is over. It just means you have to adapt to a new path that leads to something even better than what you had planned for yourself. Because in the end, His plan will always be greater than yours, and His will always overpower yours.

Money and prestige also isn’t the only thing that constitutes success. It’s great if you’re able to achieve those, but it’s even more important to find success in non-tangible things: being a good friend, being an attentive parent, helping those in need when it’s not convenient for you. There’s no success greater than that of being a human of wisdom and character, and if you can truly say you’re living to serve those around you, then I’d say you’re living a very successful life.

The bottom line is this: there will always be areas of your life where you aren’t getting the results you wanted. Sometimes it’s because you’re not putting in the work, but other times it’s because it’s not meant to be. You just have to break things down and get honest with yourself to learn how to tell the difference. And when you feel like you’re failing in one area, take a step back and look at all the other places you’re succeeding in. If you have happy children, family, friends, or neighbors, chances are you’re succeeding in serving those who are most important. And when you’re struggling, you can rest in the peace of knowing that you have a strong and loving support system. There’s no monetary success that can trump that feeling.