You're a FAILURE if…

bycynya

41 followers

6 years ago

I read somewhere that either you write your own story or someone will write it for you. I was thinking about that when I was asked to input my WA goals. Financially, they are aggressive and I'll explain that in a moment. It was however at the moment of writing those goals that I realized that my definition of success had changed.

Many years ago I was a single mom of my first adopted daughter. I was working in sales for a major telecommunications making a pretty decent salary and working from home a day or 2 per week. About that time my daughter was 4 years old, I had just moved into a new home, fairly large by middle class standards with a mortgage of just over $2,000 per month. Success? Sound successful to you!?

Only problem was I hated that job, hated it. And my 4 year old was going to begin school the next year and I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. In my mind, I was about to be a major failure as a mom. Now my priorities are God, family, and then all else. I'm rather non-religious, but I am spiritual; I believe in something more powerful than me, so all respect to the Creator. But my definition of success was family. I told myself that if I kept a roof over our heads then that stood for something. Still for me, being a mom meant being engaged, being there, and being home.

About this time a friend told me about U.S. postal auctions that were held in my city. I went to my first postal auction with him. It was fascinating. I could buy books and CD's and sell them on Amazon or Alibris or ebay. I won a bid on a rack of books at the auction and soon I was in the online sales business. Not too long after that I was doing it full-time and scared to death. I was self-employed, but this business was labor-intensive. I had to go to the auction, win the bid, pack hundreds of books into the back of my SUV, drive home and unload hundreds of books down to the basement, organize them roughly alphabetically, list them on 3 or more websites, wait for the sales, package the sold items, and drive to the post office.

I was scared but stoked that I was making it, starting a business first as a sole proprietorship and then as an LLC, and filing taxes as ME. And this was my definition of success. Just this year in May of 2018, my daughter graduated from our local state university and there was a 2nd daughter that graduated high school also in May this year and every day that my daughters went to school and came home I was there. Every time I needed to attend a parent-teacher conference or take one to the dentist or doctor, I was there. And that for me was my definition of success.

Did I struggle? You bet. Things got hairy when the big boys moved into the auction process, those owning brick-and-mortar secondhand bookstores and took over the game. It was okay though because it forced me to use my brain. I left the book and CD business within a couple of years and found employment as an independent contractor working as a support representative for primarily Fortune 1000 companies. I made a living and in all those years the gas in my home was turned off only once for late payment… haha… true story.

So what's my point? Success is not always about money. In my view, you're a failure if you fail to define success for yourself. You're a failure if you let any other person write your story. You're a failure if you let anyone else tell you what it is to be successful. Define success for you, set your goals, and go for it. And hooray to WA for acknowledging that our goals are our own.

Now I have some new goals. It's all about the fun and money. My monetary goals are aggressive because my God is at my back, my daughters are fending for themselves and I do what I want. Wish me luck as I wish the same for you and more.