{"id":12314,"date":"2020-02-28T01:07:20","date_gmt":"2020-02-28T07:07:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/?p=12314"},"modified":"2020-02-28T01:12:24","modified_gmt":"2020-02-28T07:12:24","slug":"defining-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/defining-success\/","title":{"rendered":"Defining Success"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

How do I define a successful day?  For me, a successful day is one I can come home from knowing that I did my very best, I gave it my all, I made good choices that upheld my integrity and that I treated others with kindness and respect.  That is a successful day.  Every other good thing that happens in my day is just icing on the cake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An interesting thing happened\nas I was being interviewed on a podcast today. \nThe interviewer said he felt people probably looked at me and thought to\nthemselves \u201cI bet she\u2019s never had a pimple in her life, she\u2019s probably never\nhad her heart broken by anyone, she\u2019s probably never failed at anything\u2026her\nlife\u2019s probably perfect\u201d. He then asked me to respond.  Because it was a timed podcast I gave a short\nresponse, but I\u2019ll give all of you the full story:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regarding the pimples \u2013\nokay I\u2019ll admit I\u2019ve definitely been blessed with good skin genes (thanks mom\nand dad!). However, I have spent a lifetime battling body image insecurities.\nAround age 11 or 12 I started making myself throw up my food to try and get\nskinnier. For years I went through cycles of starving myself, then binging and\npurging, and then back to starving myself. No matter how thin I became all I could\nsee in the mirror was an overweight girl who never looked good. It wasn\u2019t until\nI became pregnant with my first baby at age 23 that I finally overcame the\neating disorder, but the battle to overcome the body image issues of always\nfeeling overweight is something I still struggle with to this day. However, I\u2019ve\nlearned that the best way to feel more beautiful externally is to focus my\nattention on doing things that make me more beautiful internally such as being\nkind and loving others. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regarding having my heart\nbroken \u2013 I\u2019ve been through a miscarriage of a baby, a marriage that ended in divorce,\na broken-off marriage engagement along with several other dating relationships\nthat didn\u2019t work out over the years after my divorce, the loss of my best\nfriend, loved ones facing addiction, the loss of multiple extended family\nmembers\u2026I\u2019ve experienced my share of heartbreak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regarding failures \u2013 the reality\nis that I have failed at more things than I could begin to count in just about\nevery aspect of my life.  But long ago I decided\nto define failure a little differently \u2013 I decided failure wasn\u2019t mistakes or\nfailed attempts in my life so long as I learned something from them and I didn\u2019t\nrepeat the same mistakes twice. That view on failure has helped me pick myself\nup each time I fall and move forward which is what\u2019s enabled the successes I\u2019ve\nachieved. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My life isn\u2019t perfect, but\nno one\u2019s life is. We all have our pimples, our heartbreaks, and our failures\u2026even\nme!  But those aren\u2019t what define\nus.  How we choose to live our today is\nwhat defines us. How we choose to move forward is what defines our success. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do I define a successful life?\u00a0 To me a successful life isn\u2019t about money, or title, or success, or fame, or external beauty. To me a successful life will be one where I can return home, this time to my Father in Heaven, and tell Him I did the best I could do to live each new day a little better than the last, that I picked myself up each time I failed and moved forward, and I did what I could to help others to excel.\u00a0 The rest will be icing on the cake. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

~Amy Rees Anderson (author of the book \u201cWhat Awesome Looks Like: How To Excel in Business & Life<\/a>\u201d ) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How do I define a successful day?  For me, a successful day is one I can come home from knowing that I did my very best, I gave it my all, I made good choices that upheld my integrity and that I treated others with kindness and respect.  That is a successful day.  Every other […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11575,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[16097,23032,548,395,23034,23035,1620,23031,23029,1499,1718,4428,23033,218,508,2607,3273,389,23030,23038,23036,6009,23041,574,545,18227,23039,149,23040,442,19932,23037],"class_list":["post-12314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-a-life-well-lived","tag-a-successful-life","tag-addiction","tag-amy-rees-anderson","tag-anorexia","tag-bulimia","tag-death","tag-define-success","tag-defining-success","tag-divorce","tag-do-your-best","tag-eating-disorder","tag-external-beauty","tag-failure","tag-fame","tag-father-in-heaven","tag-heartbreak","tag-help-others-to-excel","tag-how-do-you-define-success","tag-improve-each-day","tag-its-only-a-failure-if-you-dont-learn-from-it","tag-mental-illness","tag-miscarriage","tag-money","tag-move-forward","tag-no-ones-life-is-perfect","tag-pimples","tag-success","tag-that-is-to-have-succeeded","tag-title","tag-what-awesome-looks-like","tag-what-defines-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12314"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12314\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12317,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12314\/revisions\/12317"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}