everyday success

Making Today a Success

By Polly Jensen | Posted 3.10.2014

What does it take to make it a great day for you?  What happens in a day when, at its end, you think, this was a success?

A day’s success is different than a lifetime’s success.  A lifetime is loaded with ways to measure success.  A day, those 24 little hours, are usually not quite so huge or complex.  That’s not to say that a day might not be momentous.  We have plenty of big days in our lives – graduations, weddings, meeting the one person we’ll love, job offers, the birth of a child and on and on. 

There are days that are significant but that’s not what we’re about today.  Today we’re thinking about your everyday, the days that are your more usual kinds of days.  What makes those days successful for you?  It’s a great practice to use today’s good and not so good events as a guide for tomorrow.

To get to daily success, though, means you’ll name the things you do each day that bring positive results and a sense of satisfaction.  Those are the things you make a practice, those are the things that become habit.

Conversely, make note of the things in your day that have a negative outcome or just plain don’t feel good.  Those are the things you’ll want to stop.

“There is no beginning too small.”  Those wise words of Thoreau’s prove themselves true over and over again.  My friend, Betty, while doing chemo, viewed her success in small chunks – we called it her “making it to lunch” approach to each day.  We looked at the events of her every day, we broke her day into small segments and that helped her confront adversity.

A day of success doesn’t just happen; instead, a day of success is yours to create.  A day of success is a source of happiness.