This week was a strange week for me.. Last week, I talked about how things finally felt right, and I thought I had reached a new level of success for myself. Last week, I was so proud of how far I had come. I reached a new platform, a brand new success.
I walked into this week BEAMING! So proud of my accomplishment and this new phase of life that I had reached.
What I failed to realize was this, once you reach a new level of success, you reach new obstacles, challenges and lessons that can leave you feeling fairly unsuccessful... This was how my week felt.
I won't get into details, because they're personal, but in a nut shell, I found myself on unstable ground this week, feeling very emotionally and spiritually drained. I learned things about myself that I simply did not like, and it hurt me to admit that there were deep unconscious flaws that needed to be addressed. These realizations put my relationship in a rocky place, which always leaves me feeling off balance and at my lowest. Though better now, there is still some healing that needs to be done.
What's strange is how God turns things around for you when you choose to do the self-work. The light work that challenges you to look inward and fix whatever needs fixing. For me, I found this week left me in a position of internal understanding that freed me of some darker parts of my past. What I hope were the last of those darker memories from that particular era of my life.
What changed after that amazed me!
After having such an emotional week, and resolving some issues, I found myself feeling compelled to focus what was left of my energy on music... As the saying goes, "do what you need to do in order to do what you want to do", I ended up focusing my attention on work and making money instead. About an hour into my work day, I received a phone call about two last minute paid gigs, one of which required me to be at the venue within the next 30 minutes of that phone call. God moves so fast.
"If you don't let go of this piece of your past, you will never move on to the next phase of your life" these were the words that resonated over and over again this week. He was completely right. Setting that piece of myself free allowed God to bless me with my next phase of artistry and I'm so thankful to have allowed more room for God to work.
It's interesting. You grow, you accomplish new things, every time, you reach new heights and new successes, but what is success? How do we define it... Everyone defines success so differently, and for me, I'm finding that it is fleeting. You succeed at something, and suddenly you're at the bottom again. A roller-coaster of success. At first I was bummed out about it. Like, damn, here we go again starting from the bottom. Then I realized, that it's all a part of the process and there is nothing wrong with that at all.
Success is a process. It takes time, energy, self-discovery and flexibility to be successful. It's not just a one-shot, paved path... It's a journey. It's a part of this life journey.
Understanding this has allowed me to take some of the pressure off of myself and to remember that every day there is a chance to be successful. It just depends how you define it.
This week, I consider confronting something darker and releasing it to God a success. I define success in the ability to allow myself to feel, to hurt, to cry, and to remember that everything is going to be ok. I define success in my ability to see and receive the blessings that God gave me because I did the work it took to release something I was holding on to. So while I may not be as ecstatic as I was last week, I am still very proud of my successes.
How do you define success?