5 Steps for Defining Your Personal Path to Success

1) Write out what success feels like to you.

This sounds much easier than it is. Rather than list out all of the milestones that you hope to achieve, try to write a description of what your future state of success will look like. Include where you would be, who you'd be with, what you would do with your time, what activities and interests you would want to pursue, what value you'd want to add to the world or your community. And then visualize this relentlessly on a daily basis. This is True North on your compass. Follow it!

2) Create your list of "what" you want to achieve, but with every "what" goal include "why" it's important to you.

I've been keeping lists of what I want to accomplish as long as I can remember. But I realized some time ago that the lists where only as valuable as I was willing to be flexible. I've achieved some of my most audacious goals, but there are others that I've had to set aside, either because my own values changed or because the original goal wasn't really something I wanted. What I've learned is that setting down why the goal is important to me allows me to find different paths to the achieve the why even though I may not get there in the same way I thought I would. Don't be afraid to change the metrics of success as the awareness of your own needs changes and evolves.

3) Celebrate the hard route you take to achieving your ambitions.

We gripe at suffering and pain and effort, but these are the only paths to real success. "Wait," you say, what if I just won the lottery, no pain there!" No, but as Thomas Paine once said, "Whatever we earn to easily we esteem to lightly." The reason I refocused my student on celebrating her struggle over achieving her grade was because the most important lessons she learned came from that struggle. We value most what we have truly had to earn on our own. Success is always sweeter that way.

4) Create your own definition of what success is and don't feel obligated to buy into anyone else's definition.

All of the accolades and awards are wonderful trophies to place on your mantel or on your walls. I have them as well. But as I said earlier they are only the shadows of success, its adornments; shadows and adornments don't keep you warm. Its' the ability to spend your time the way you want. Towards the end of his life Steve Jobs offered up what I feel is one of his most heartfelt and relevant quotes, "My favorite things in life don't cost any money. It's really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time." But you already knew that!

5) Don't ignore the detours that increase the "why" at the expense of the "what."

One of the most amazing things about success is that when you look back on it the path that got you here is rarely the one you thought would. Which is why the biggest mistake you can make is to get stuck on the what rather than the why. This is one of the best paths to regret because you are always looking in the rearview mirror playing "what if" games with yourself. I've found that when the path you're on forks or branches it's usually for a very good reason. Take the blinders off and pay attention to the detours, they may not always be the fastest routes but they will definitely be the ones on which you learn most of what you need to be successful.

You may not be there yet, but here's the good news. If you go through the steps above you will know what success should feel like and you will never be able to shirk the responsibility of having that knowledge. You will be able to look at what you're doing with brutal honesty and answer, without any equivocation, if the path you're on is leading to your destination of success. If isn't then don't waste time, revisit your "why," carve out a new path, and stop chasing shadows!