What is success?

As I wrote in my previous post, I know that I have to define what success is to me. This was a topic during one of the sessions at Convention last week and it has been a constant thought in my mind since then. Success is subjective for each person, but as a society, we put so much time into judging others' success. I think that is why it is so daunting to think about!

When I am online or at work or wherever, I feel like I am constantly seeing other individual's successes. At conferences, people are given awards and their success is shown. On TV and in the news, stories are told about people and what they have accomplished. All of these things make me want to do great things too...but I am getting hung up on what success I want? How do I make my own success? What does success even mean to me?

Being the "good" student affairs professional that I am, I have been trying to look at this from the "SMART" goal perspective. My thought process behind this is that if I can think of two or three goals that I have for myself, I can put them on paper and create a plan. Doing so will help me process a little easier this whole success concept, right? Not so much. I am still stuck! I can't even figure out what I want to do in order to write out some goals!

I don't know that I would call this a quarter-life crisis (although if I am just now only a quarter way through my life, I am OK with that...I have much more to see and do!). But I find myself really struggling with the question "where do you see yourself professionally and/or personally in 5 or 10 years?" I really have no clue.

I guess on one hand, I am happy with where I am now. But on the other hand I am getting fearful that I am being complacent and will wake up horribly unsatisfied one day. Maybe I am over-analyzing (my close friends would say I am good at that). But maybe not?

So for now I am going to focus on the little things: I am going to complete my 100 miles of running for the summer and try to blog two or three times a week. Eventually I will start thinking a little bit more of how I define my success AND how I am going to achieve it. How do I stay loyal to myself and what I want and not get caught up in what society says I should do?

We'll see how this plan goes.