Which Way is Your Success Ladder Leaning?

We’ve all heard the saying – climbing the ladder to success or climbing the corporate ladder, right?

What does that mean to you? Are you really climbing that ladder?

It’s so easy to get caught up in the:

* Check this off my list
* I have so many meetings
* Life if so busy, I have no time

We work harder and harder to climb that success ladder only to discover it’s leaning against the wrong wall. Well that sucks, doesn’t it?

You feel like you’ve wasted so much time. I know I’ve been there.

According to the dictionary, the definition of success is:
The accomplishment of an aim or purpose; the attainment of popularity or profit; a person or thing that achieves desired aims or attains prosperity.

Did you catch the last part of that sentence? Let me write it again – “A person or thing that achieves desired aims or attains prosperity.”

So what does that mean? It means that YOU define your own success because it looks different to everyone.  It’s also different based on where you are in life.

How do you know when your success ladder is on the right wall?

You have to ask yourself lots of questions.

* What do you want out of your career?
* What do you want your life to look like?
* What will make you feel fulfilled?

These are just a few, I have a whole slew of questions you can see here…but the bottom line is that you need to know your end game BEFORE you start climbing.

By knowing what you want your end result to look like, you can easily say no to things that don’t match your goals or your version of success.

I heard an awesome quote on the Tim Ferris podcast with Arianna Huffington, which really got me thinking.

“Your inbox is everyone’s agenda for your time.”

I’m not going to do down the email rabbit hole, but it made me think about all the things that we can get sidetracked with. We own our ladder, we put our ladder against the wall, and we climb up the ladder. No one else does.

Who owns your time when you’re trying to grow your business or add that additional service or product? You need to be intentional and mindful (insert buzz words of the year) of all your choices.

Is your ladder on the right wall? Leave a comment; I’d love to know.