The Determining Factor of your Level of Success is you

When it comes to success, many measure it by the amount of money you have, the number of possessions that you possess or the level of power or influence you exhibit.  While all of these have been measures that many of us have used, it is not the ultimate determining factor of anyone’s success.  Money can be gained not by what you have accomplished but by what others may have left for you.  Possessions will never be the ultimate because in order to truly own anything, you must be able to take that possession with you wherever you go and we all know that when your earthly life expires, none of those possessions will ever be able to travel with you.  The level of power and influence is the only one of the three which can be felt long after you have graduated from the earthly shell which houses your soul but that is only apparent or useful to those that you may have made contact with while you were living in the flesh.

From the day of anyone’s birth, here on earth, the desire to be more and do more dwells within all of us.  It is nurtured, nourished and grows based on the input of those we hold in high esteem and even can come from those who may not know us as well as some but see within us a glow that only few can see.  It could be that teacher, that boss, that fellow employee or a complete stranger that passes you in aisle 8 of the local grocery store.  What they see, what dwells deep within us is that desire to achieve.  I believe that all of us begin where our parents currently stand at the time of conception and move up from there.  Consider if you hail from parents that have graduated from high school then you level of understanding begins, as an infant, at that level and can only increase if you are provided with the tools necessary to believe in yourself enough to reach higher.  But regardless of where you begin, your final destination, when it comes to how high you can go, is unlimited and is only limited by what you choose to believe is your cut-off point.

As we grow, we often use several examples to determine how high we can soar from watching our older siblings to watching and learning from anyone else who may have achieved but just as they can teach us to reach for the stars, these same sources can also teach us to keep our hands down.  The choice of whether you stretch out your arms is never up to anyone except you and therefore the results of whether you see yourself as a success or not should never be laid at the feet of anyone but you.  We are limitless in our capacity to excel simply because we are made in the image of God and God being a spirit without limits means that we are also.  You see, our earthly bonds restrict us from growing far beyond and above its borders but it does not stop us.  Being a limitless being, allows us to soak up, display and demonstrate countless talents that our man-made shell and those around us typically think we can’t.  Think about what many call our inner strength.  This inner strength does not come from any outside factor, this inner strength comes from our ability to tap into our limitless spirit.  Think of a runner, who is extremely tired and out of breath but when he/she sees that finish line can summon the strength to finish strong, that’s us tapping into our inner strength, our limitless spirit.

You must decide for yourself, how far you wish to go and allow no one or nothing to deter or stop you from achieving it because in the end, they will not be the true reason that you feel as though you are not complete or failed.  For those who seem to settle, success is still within your grasp because all you ruly need to do is re-define what success is for you.  If you feel the best that you can do is work in someone’s factory instead of owning your own, success can be re-defined as being the best at your job that you can be.  If you feel the best that you can do is make it through high school then re-defining success is the fact that you made it through especially if you can find others who didn’t.  The determining factor to success is how you see yourself and not how you think others do.  The degree of success is not measured by society but measured simply and only by you.  Society says you need a high school education to be successful, yet hundreds of people who did not obtain a high school education has gone on and is now considered a success by the very same society.  Look around, do your own research and you will find that those society labels a success did so mainly by tapping into that limitless spirit that we all possess.  Now this possession we truly own because we can take this with us where ever we go even in an earthly death.