Success: our final destination

Success. What does it look like? To some it is finally buying a dream car; to others it is landing the perfect job. For every person in the world, reaching success looks differently. Our beliefs on what success could—or should—be stem from a few different sources.

1. Your upbringing. How your parent’s succeeded, or failed to succeed. How they spoke about others who were “successful” in their eyes. How they received you when you did something well, how love was given or with held when you failed. All of these factors play a role in what you view success to be, and what you strive for.

2. Your self-image. The view you have of yourself can play into when and how you will view yourself as successful. Those who have confidence and find worth at a low paying, hard to do job, will most likely still see themselves as valuable at a higher end job. Those who don’t see themselves as successful at the things they are doing, and are always striving to find success at a later date, will most likely never feel successful even when they have reached their goals. Cars, houses, jobs, relationships will never feel satisfying and the next best thing will evenaully come around to replace what originally was viewed as success.  It is all about perception. That’s not to say we can’t have goals and ambitions, but if we can’t find joy in life now . . . it will be harder to find then.

3. Your relationships. What energy do you put into relationships with those around you? What importance do you put on their well-being? How selfish are you? Do you love to get love back, or do you love to see another being be loved? The view you have on relationships and their importance in your life, can play a role on your view of what success should or could be.

4. Your personality. For a more laid back personality, success could be viewed differently than a person who is a little more tightly wound. A perfectionist verses a person less concerned with details. All of these biologically engrained and learned personality traits can play in to the way we ideal what success should be.

5. Your environment. Who do you surround yourself with? What do your friends view success to be? What environments do you feel comfortable in? How do you feel around people you view as “successful”? Do you feel more successful when around someone you feel better than in some way? Do you have encouragement from your surroundings, or do they bring you down? How do you perceive others view of you? Do you compliment others who have found success? Do you struggle with jealousy or hatred? Do you hold on to the past or fear the future? Do you live within your means? Do you hold onto “stuff” or do you keep your space clean and fresh? All of these can play a role in the energy that is around you while setting goals and viewing future success.

6. Your thoughts. Do you think negatively about yourself and others? Do you let your thoughts spiral out of your control when fear kicks in? Can you determine a truth from a lie in your own mind? Do you ask others for approval, or do you have confidence in decisions? Do you like yourself? Do you believe in yourself? Do you trust others? Do you trust yourself? Do you trust God? Your thoughts and beliefs can help to shape, or misshape your view of success.

So what is success? If it isn’t a destination that can be defined by anyone—for everyone—why do we keep spending our years feeling like we have failed at getting there?

Why do so many people keep wishing for the next big thing to bring them happiness and validate a fear or belief that they are not successful without it?—because it is a lie. “Success” is the fish you will never catch. Its goal is to keep you so busy striving for it, that you miss the things that make you successful right now.

We all succeed in our own way. While one woman is out conquering the world in her career, another is a mother changing diapers at home. While one man is making millions in a high-rise penthouse, another is pinching pennies to feed his children in a trailer. Both have found success—just in a different way. But to say one is more successful for all the numbers they have gained, is forgetting that those numbers cannot last forever.

I know a few people who I would say are my hero’s of success—and there is no dollar amount to why. My grandma would feed—what felt like a hundred of—us every holiday, never complaining about the cost or the time—but always giving unconditional love. My mom had five kids of her own and took on seven more with a second marriage. Through all of her ups and downs in life, I never once heard her complain or lose faith in God. To me, they have made it . . . to “success”. They have learned how to love.

And we all have an example who showed what true success looks like. He came to earth—as we all did—with a very unique mission and purpose. His story is one of a poor man who spent his days serving others. He served because He loved. He died, because He cared. He could see what we can’t—but lived as we can.

So success. What is it? It would seem—as we all get cloudy on our definition of when one will reach the success they have worked their life for—we might have all had it all wrong. Success is finding your connection to God, and the reason He sent you here to earth. Success is leaving a great legacy for your family, by the way you show them how to love. Success is being you and finding joy along the way. 

If I have said it once, I will say it again a thousand times. We have to put our family first. The dark clouds are just going to keep getting darker. Keep fighting. The light is going to get dim—at times—don’t let it burn out.

Success—true success—at the end of this thing we call life will not be measured in numbers and dollar signs, it will not be obtained by a dream house or a dream car. It will be achieved by living a dream life. Make memories. Laugh. Find joy—in the stuff that is real . . . the relationships you will take with you.

“I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it's not the answer.” Jim Carrey

Anything but Normal

Thank you to Deseret News for publishing one of my stories today! Made my day.

Anything but Normal

Anything but normal

Last night I was getting frustrated with my washing machine. A few months back it started acting up and wouldn't add water into the tank. I experimented and found that if I ran it on the delicate cycle it worked just fine. Then I tried the bedding cycle—worked perfectly. So I tried, on the third load, to go back to the normal setting and run it again. Nothing. Dry as a bone. 

So for the last few months—instead of calling a repairman like a "normal" person—I have just run the machine on all the settings, except normal. Yesterday my frustrations were reignited when I forgot and tried to run the machine on the normal setting. Figuring out at the end of the cycle that the machine hadn’t even begun to do its job. The clothes had gone through the cycle, but since no water had been added to the machine they were still dry . . . and dirty.

What is normal? A destination we want to reach? What we think others are—and we should want to become? Is the ideal of “normal” something that inspires us to set goals, or just a word that makes us believe we aren’t good enough the way we are?

 Normal. It is just a setting on my washing machine, but as of right now, even on my washing machine “normal” is pretty useless.

What is normal in an individual? And in a family? I think we all have an idea of what a family should look like—an ideal setting in which we want to strive to live. As individuals we set goals to become something we are not currently living as, and hopes for what we want others to become. Only in families, when we have our heart set on “normal” we almost always fail, because the truth is: “normal” isn’t real.

NONE of us are normal. And just like my washer, no matter how many times I try to force it into that “setting”—or we try to live in the belief of becoming “normal”—or mistakenly forget that it doesn’t work for us—but accidently try to start using it again—something is going to go wrong. We stop living life as us, and begin aspiring to an unachievable goal. And we go through the motions—of the “normal” life . . . but in the end we are still just a pile of dirty clothes. Sometimes wondering if we are in the wrong place because our path doesn’t look like we thought that it should. Our families feel anything but normal and we start to wonder if our need to feel “normal” would better be achieved somewhere else.

So where do we reach that goal? Can it ever be achieved in the un“normal” settings we have all been placed in? We want to be happy, but our belief that we first have to be normal . . . is making us miserable.

Look at your family. They are everything but “normal” right? Ya. Me too. But they are right where we belong.

Every family looks different. Some have only one parent. Some have no children. Some families are two families blended together into one. Some kids have to go back and forth between two houses—other kids wished they had a house to live. Some children have a birth mom and live with parents who look nothing like them. In some households everyone looks almost exactly the same. Some couples wished they could have a baby—others don’t know what to do with the news that a baby is on the way. 

Humans. Not one of us is the same. We each have a story—a unique journey that has made us who we are. Some of us were planned—some of us were surprises. Some of us have dark skin— others have light. Some of us have brown eyes, and others got their blue eyes from a father they have never met. But not one of us is normal. And we were never supposed to be. Unique and different from one person to another—and one family to the next.

So many nights I have cried with a prayerful plea that I could just be “normal” again. Some of these moments have been a cry for the pain to be taken from me; others a hope that my past could be erased. Some days have been a wish that one of our daughters didn’t have to flip flop between two houses, and the others didn’t have to know firsthand what murder was. “Normal” began to be a destination I thought I could fight to reach—but every day I see that it is a mystical place that no one was ever supposed to be.

Satan uses it as a goal we are supposed to strive for, so we always wonder what is wrong with us. Never fully living in our own truths—always having a thought at the back of our mind that our differences keep us from that goal.

So in light of our very un“normal” blended family’s anniversary I petition that we ban the normal setting in our minds—just like my washing machine—and start seeing the good that comes from looking at our families, and ourselves, with the delicate setting as our goal.

God believes in you. He believes in families. He believes in love. He believes in making right our wrongs. He believes in us . . . as broken, blended, delicate, fractured, and imperfect as we are.

So to all my un“normal” friends. Thanks for loving the broken me, that has shared my heart with all of you. Thanks for believing in this far from “normal” blended family that I get to call mine every single day. Thanks for living your stories, as hard and emotional as they have been. For sharing your struggles and triumphs with me and helping me understand how special each journey can be.

Normal really is just a setting on a washing machine—and if you ask me it is over rated. You are delicate, and your life is beautiful. With all the bumps and bruises, and smiles in between.

Five years ago Shawn and I made the biggest decision of our lives. We became a blended family.

Has it been easy? Nope. Were we prepared for it? No. Has it been perfect? Not at all. Have there been days when one or the other of us has thought we made a mistake and wished we could just be "normal"? Absolutely.  

But I would do it all again . . .

The crazy part of life is that we never know what it has in store. We can try to map it out, and create plans but the truth is, the only thing we can plan is that our map will have some twists and turns. 

Be prepared to take some leaps. Be willing to jump. Have faith that God's plan will be greater than the one you always thought you would live. And then live it. Own it. And make the most of every moment. Like it was all on purpose. 

Happy Anniversary to the man who has stood by my side through the hardest of days—but also the sweetest of memories. I don’t know how we made it through, but I am so thankful I am here with you. There has been nothing normal about our life, but I love that we fight every day to live it.

Love you Shawn.

Post about our marriage: 
http://www.themomentswestand.com/2014/05/what-if-i-jump.html