Success: Do I Have To?

A question was brought up today on Active Rain by fellow blogger Guy Giminez: what is your definition of success?

In my opinion, a mature, fulfilling answer would suggest that success is the journey, not necessarily the goal.  Success is not about reaching a goal, but would focus on the path in getting to a goal.  If the path you took was been an ethical path, one that made you happy while travelling it, then you have achieved success.  An unhappy journey would mean failure.  That would be the higher-ground answer.

But we're not usually wired that way, now are we?

Even as a child, I have always been goal-oriented.  A the age of 7, I would stay up way too late so I could finish reading my book and find out the ending.  Granted, I was reading with a flashlight under my covers so my mom wouldn't find out, but I HAD to know what happened.  Sometimes, I would cheat on puzzles just so I could finish them.  I never unwrapped one of my Christmas presents, but I shook the living daylights out of them trying to figure them out!

And now?  What is my goal in my real estate career?  Yes, I love helping people, and I have specific and definite goals for each client that I work with.  But what about long-term goals?  What about my own personal goals for my entire real-estate career? 

And what happens when you reach your goal, i.e. become successful?  Is that when you quit?  Retire?  Or is that when you make new goals for yourself?

Part of my goal is definitely financial.  But there has to be balance too.  At this point, my long-term goal is two-fold: to add a certain amount of money to our retirement savings each year, and to have a high enough income so that when my husband retires from the military in 7 years, he doesn't feel that he haas to go get anotheer job right away.  I want him to be able to take his time and figure out what will make him happy.  So, I guess if my husband is happy in his second career in eight or nine years, then my real-estate career can be considered successful.

Now for the balance part -- I need to be able to do that while still being able to spend a lot of time with my immediate family.  My miracle-baby little boy, my husband, my mother, my father, all mean so much to me, and I want them to know that.  I don't want to look back and mourn the time that I could have spent with them.  It's the balance part of success that scares me.  I have never been good at balance. I either did everything 100%, or I didn't do it at all.  And the danger right now is that I see myself doing that with real estate too, in short spurts. 

One week I spend a lot of time on real estate, and get very busy.  The next week, I spend a lot of time with my family, having dinner with my parents, taking my son to the Kitsap Moms Meetup playgroup I set up for him, seducing my husband into leaving the USS John C. Stennis before 7 pm by promising him that, after dinner, he can work on his car. (thought I was going somewhere there, didn't ya?)

Perhaps that is my balance.  Perhaps I balance by going from week to week.  Maybe this is my success.  Could this be my success right now and I am missing it?  Wow, never thought about that concept before.  Hmmm, this may lead to another blog post.