This full moon weekend has encouraged me to ask some questions of myself. As often happens for me around this time I re evaluate and take stock of where I am, who I am and how I feel about my life. This month I decided to investigate my own opinion of success.
To do this I had to decide what I interpreted as success!! 
Leading me to look deeper into how we characterize success?
What are the characteristics for you in someone you’d consider successful?
Isn’t it so often external?
- Physical achievements. Those that win races or medals. They are successful in their field. Often these successes are mainly recognized within the field for which they apply. As I suppose are many successes. Only applicable to those who understand the context in which the success has been earned.
- Or maybe do we admire the qualities that earn that success rather than the success itself? The discipline and the motivation; the quality of tapas, an inner heat able to transform someone into something beautiful, physically able should be recognized but should the end result be a measure of success?
- These days with the use of social media, success may even be measured in likes on a Facebook post or page or quantity of friends or followers.
- People are congratulated on an attractive physical appearance; we admire beauty & hence consider it an admirable quality to have. However is being beautiful or attractive a measure of success?
- Material possessions. Or in some spiritual traditions maybe absence of possessions. Are having a lot, or having very little and surviving with the basics really being successful? Do you really think a bigger house makes you successful?
Should not success be on qualities such as honesty or honour? 
Is not success the ability to act with grace and fortitude through the hard times?
To bring yourself back from fear with a heart still open to possibility
Success is in my eyes is living a fulfilled life. A life in which you follow your dharma, your purpose. For poor is the rich man who has only money
As was advised by Swami Rama ‘First, become clear what your duty or purpose is in life, second, learn to love it‘
So in that respect I am successful for I am living my dream. I may not have the obvious trappings of success such as a sports car or a huge house but I have happiness. I have joy most days of my life. I have purpose, and a purpose that shapes my actions and my intent.
To have purpose, and to enjoy, to love serving your life’s purpose is to be a success. 
We have preconceptions and attachments to the material aspects of success. Societal expectation and self-judgments tempt us away from our dreams towards what we ‘should be doing’. Maybe the idea that those trappings of success that the modern Western society often strive for.are worth something Things, cars, clothes. This awful addiction to bigger bigger bigger
Bigger house, cars, bling. This is not success, in my opinion this is fear. Living in fear of what others think.
Living in fear of following your dreams, of following your souls wisdom can never lead to success. Yes you may earn money other ways but it won’t bring satisfaction or contentment at the level of your soul. 
Following your purpose means being authentic. Being successful at expressing yourself and your joy of life. Many people are fearful of moving away from practical measurable goals or from day to day reality. Maybe you need to spend time with a life coach or in meditation discovering your inner wisdom. The little voice that is your intuition and your guide to your true calling. Maybe take time out for you on a yoga holiday to ‘step off the world’ and take stock.
To be a success means to be you 
Authentically you. Doing that which makes you glow. For me that is my little world at Yoga in Cheshire. The people in my world, the love in my life. The love of my life.
So be successful…pause and notice what you interpret as success and move toward it. Not just the stuff that society tells you makes you seem successful, but the true success, the inner contentment, the inner smile to live a life of purpose.