The following article is taken from an Instagram LIVE on Feb 15th, 2023. Prefer to watch? Go here.
We are going into success today, the embodiment of success and why you don't feel successful.
And I am going to ask you three questions to activate success.
Firstly, the words that came to me today about success were:
You are a success when you are in your body and success is a feeling in your body.
Success is a feeling in your body.
You are a success when you are in your body - how beautiful is that?
How pitch perfect is that?
One of the central concerns that leaders have when they come to me for 1:1 work is - they don't feel worthy.
They don't feel worthy of what they have, therefore they don't feel successful.
May I remind them and you...
Success is in your body.
Success is in your body.
The reason why you don't feel successful right now is because you keep using external measures as your source of success. You look out there, you use quantitative approaches, you have yardsticks, you have measuring sticks, you have Excel spreadsheets, you have someone's opinion. You have someone's words of affirmation, you have a certain amount of money….
All of those are nice to haves.
When you recognise that the secret is you and that you hold the keys to your own success, then, interestingly enough, those things flow more easily.
Those things flow more easily when you are no longer attached to them. You are no longer holding your breath waiting for someone to say certain words for you to prove that you're a success or that you did something really well.
No longer waiting for a certain number to turn up in your bank account.
You are no longer waiting for someone to give you the gift that you've secretly asked them for in five different ways to then prove that your relationship is currently successful.
All those things become a reflection and become much more surprising and spontaneous. When in here is already established as successful.
You don't feel successful because you're using external measures of success to prove when you should feel successful. And you're holding your breath and you're waiting. And then what happens is a classic response. Your brain gets a dopamine hit, but your body doesn't register and you go: next. Next, what's the next thing? What's next?
That is because your nervous system and your operating system…subconscious, all of them, are not on a frequency of registering what success is in a qualitative sense.
Brain gets it for a second body doesn't we want to change that.
They are very outdated measures of success, incredibly outdated.
The new waves of success are here and they are qualitative first, and then the quantitative can show up just as a bit of like a cheer squad.
But you have to trust the qualitative first, and you have to follow and nurture the qualitative first and the qualitative is inside of you. The qualitative is a feeling.
The first question to activate your success is:
What is success to you right now?
Take this question so seriously: what is success to you right now?
And I challenge you to make it qualitative only.
Success is when…
…I have the freedom to choose how my day unfolds
…I have the freedom to change the plan
…I don't just feel loved by other people but I love myself unconditionally and I am unshakable in that love
…I say pause, trusting that I will go again soon.
…I feel flow in my body
Success is the quality with which I come into my body without distraction.
Success is how much fun I have.
Success is how much surprise and delight I allow into my life.
Success is how much novelty I have in my life
What is success to you right now? In a purely qualitative sense? Start there.
The above are some of the truths for me, but they might not be true for you.
The second question to activate your success is:
What do you think or change when you get your external validation of success?
Everyone gets attached or has an idea of what will be different when a certain level of success is acquired.
What do you think will change?
What do you think will change in here?
What do you think will change out there?
When you get that external validation of success, be it money, be it a certain property, be a certain possession, be it a certain relationship or connection.
A certain status.
A blue tick on Instagram.
A certain number of team members.
What is it? What do you think will change?
What do you think - I'm asking that question consciously.
That thing that you think will change is accessible to you right now. Because that thing that you think will change is a feeling more than it's an actual thing out there.
What your mind is probably doing is getting caught up in thinking that the certain thing will give you a feeling - when I sit in that first class cabin, then I'll have the feeling...
If you are not already accessing experiences that can give you a similar feeling, what will happen is you're holding in for this one feeling, just say when you get in that first class cabin.
If you are holding out for what's going to happen, it's going to fizzle. It’s going to feel weird. It's not going to be tangible to you.
And the reason why that experience is not going to be tangible to you is because you haven't acclimatised in other ways and you've been putting so much pressure on this one fleeting experience to give you a feeling of success or satisfaction.
And what happens is it's too much - not in the best possible way but it's actually too much for your system and your system defaults to whatever one of its classic defence mechanisms is.
So if you've had that experience before of like: I thought this was going to be amazing. I thought I was going to feel successful. When I got this accolade when I sat down that first class cabin, when I did this when I did that when I got here.
If that has happened to you before and you didn't fully feel the way that you thought that you were, that says to me that you haven't acclimatised and made strides to access those feelings in other ways that are available to you right now.
And it's great to dream big and go for the big thing.
Yet if you aren't relishing the smaller, repetitive, beautiful, poignant moments in life, and are always holding on and holding in for this one big thing in the future then in that gap, you’re going to F it up.
You sabotage it, you block it.
You blame something or someone else for why things weren't as good as you thought or why it went wrong, rather than really being present in the moment and enjoying the experience. Or you use your phone the whole time rather than actually being where you are.
So what do you think will change when you get external validation of success?
What do you think will change? Everyone thinks they're going to be a better person or have a better life.
The challenge is to be a better person now, be a successful person now, or a satisfied person or a Sovereign person now, or a sensual person now.
Now.
My third question to activate your success is:
What does success feel like in your body?
What does success feel like in your body?
And if you've never felt successful in your body, what would it feel like and get incredibly specific about the sensations and don't say, Oh, I’ll just know.
That's not an answer.
What does it feel like in your body?
Does it feel fizzy? tingly? Does it feel turned on? Do you feel expansive?
What will you feel in your body when you feel successful?
What does successful like in your body?
Get incredibly specific
If you don't get specific, you're not going to know that you feel successful.
I personally feel successful in the most mundane moments of life, because I've changed my definition of success.
I've changed my definition. I've focused on the feeling. And that means regardless of how many clients I have, regardless of how much money I have, regardless of what opportunities I'm creating out there, I can feel successful on any given day at any given moment.
Because I choose to and because it is an experience in my body.
And spoiler alert it usually happens with something that's completely free and available.
Something that you don't have to go out there and invest in at five figure levels and above.
Success is *in here*.
And if you are not accessing the feelings of success on the daily, on the regular through your body, then those are the big things that you're chasing are going to fizzle.
You're going to sabotage it.
You're going to start a fight with someone.
You're going to block it.
You're not going to feel worthy and it's going to feel foreign.
So many things will happen when your programming and your operating system is not calibrated to a broader definition of success.
A somatic definition of success.
You’re currently calibrated to: when I get this thing then I will feel successful but that’s wrong.
Wrong in that you will be on your deathbed with regrets.
You will be on your deathbed saying: I had all of these beautiful relationships. I had all of these incredible opportunities. I had health. I had wealth. And I didn't appreciate it because I kept chasing the elusive definition of success out there. And it kept disappointing me.
Don't make that your story.
These are the three questions activate your success. Let’s recap.
The first one is: What is success to you right now?
The second one is: What do you think or change when you get external validation of success?
And the third one is: What does success feel like in your body and if you don't know or it's unfamiliar to you, what do you feel or anticipate success will feel like in your body?
Keep bringing it back to what does it feel like, not acquiring material objects.
Keep dreaming big but do both. If you're not appreciating the small things in life, you will sabotage the big things that you say that you want when you're going for them or they just won't come to you.
It will be a challenge for them to come to you.
If you're reading this, you're probably a success right now.
In fact, not probably, you are definitively successful right now.
Sit with that for a moment. And if you're finding those words just bouncing off of you and you repelling and going: No way because this hasn't happened and this hasn't happened and this hasn't. And this hasn't happened…
Then you are exactly who will readily transform through my More: Success Incubator.
You’re ripe to be ignited in a way that you haven’t allowed yourself to experience before. And when you allow yourself to be ignited, you’ll finally feel what’s been elusive - deep satisfaction, success and an unwavering belief in who you are.
Access the More: Success Incubator on demand here.
Lauren xo