Redefining The Word of ‘Success’

If I could ask you; how do you define success? We all have different answers to this question since we all have different backgrounds and goals towards our life.

Since we are hitting year 2020, I am sure many of us have that new year’s list with goals and better picture of another 365 days, with ambition to ticking all those checklists — just because it’s new year’s hey, it definitely smells like a new beginning, and yes it’s time to begin again.

But, if we could be honest, after all these years we made the new year’s resolution, how many of us finding ourselves keeping track with our resolution until day 365/365? Mm unfortunately I’m not quite there yet.

I guess I am not the only one? I met so many new friends and strangers these past years, we end up in raw and transparent conversations; how we as youngsters LOVE our freedom, besides our goals & our healthy-lifestyle. We love our freedom so much, that we often let go of very important things in our life just for the sake of experience & pleasure (that usually only happens in the short-term anyway). My sister and I called that, ‘lost focus syndrome’ haha. Yeah, because we often take our freedom for granted. This often happens to impress people we don’t even like too, if we want to be real.

Moreover, I found that myself and people in my generation adore the words ‘hustle’ and ‘push to the limit’ too much. Personally, I’m also a huge fan of those words for number of years — I live it up those words on a daily basis and it helped me to reached some milestones of my life, but eventually, that attitude leads me to the bottom of my career too. We judge success too quick, in a short scale, in a the short-term especially. We gotta admit, that we are drowning in an instant lifestyle that the world offers the most right now, just because we think it’s cool or what the society accepts nowadays. The fact is, if you actually just age quarter-century just like me, we haven’t experienced much, and there’s more to come. Who said that? My mama. She’s not always right, but she’s often right. Well, she’s 65 years old and she’s healthy & lives well — so it’s not something we could underestimate about right?

Little bit sharing about my life; since I moved to Australia and live independently, my mom has utmost respect towards me. Especially because I worked so hard, enthusiast, & very confident girl. Moreover, she knows how passionate I was towards what I do in my career. I guess that happened since I was 17 yrs old till 24 yrs old, when I had my energy I pushed it maximum as I could. Not only my mom, I guess people that have trained & worked with me acknowledge that as well. But later after that, I have so many injuries that gradually happened quite frequent. Before that, I have some injury too but I managed it quite well with physiotherapy, acupuncture, and remedial massage. So if you missed it, I work as a chef, again my job is very physical — we always stand up, always moving, always carrying heavy or non-heavy stuff, in the heat, and pressure all the time. However, as I am 26 yrs old right now, I promise you I can really hear my body screaming; physically & mentally. Although many people can validate my work towards my education, experience, and resume and how I am pretty much nailed it as a young girl, currently my body can’t. Why? Because I ignored my body for too long. To be in this career journey, it’s rewarding — but my personal lifestyle? It was a mess, I caught up too much in work-life that most of the time I dont even have time to take care of myself. Yes I am proud to be that girl that stands up amongst many other young chefs, representing young female especially, but I can’t deny if I wanna continue in this career; I do need to change my lifestyle — otherwise, I can’t go far, even I might can’t go on.

OK! Phew- that was quick sharing! I thought I did a good job to share my life experience in words into a long paragraph. To share what I was going through is actually not easy, but deep down I know; that mess is about to be my message. I could hide and protect my image like many other people or figures, but this year I choose to be radical person instead. I think it’s wise to stop hiding and share what we have, because other people might need our story to keep going in whatever field they do. It’s 2020, everybody might already know what is happening nowadays — we just need to raise the self-awareness and care about issues we interested in, not just to talk about it; so we can put whatever concerns that we have into actions. So yeah, I am in a war with cultural expectations and standards because I want to be real instead of liked to be someone that I’m not. Because it is so important y’all. Imagine to live a life that is not only good on the outside, but inside too? Wouldn’t be wonderful? In spite of that, I guess it’s time to wake up now. It’s time to acknowledge and love ourselves better, also work better in communities.

Since I stepped into 2020, I told myself I gotta throw away words ‘hustle’ or ‘push to the limit’. Just because it’s dumb. I don’t even know where on the earth, we millennials find those words. It’s really misleading and leads us to enslave ourselves. I replaced it with words ‘abide’ and ‘one step at a time’ this year. As we really really really need to listen to our body, no matter how strong you are, please if you need, take that intentional rest. Let’s aim to go far rather than big. Nothing wrong with doing constant little steps that could lead to bigger steps. Also, please learn from me not to sacrifice our health for a shortcut success. Whatever it is, please think about our safety first. I guess my 2019 was pretty heavy — often in that year I found myself overwork & very overtime with sentence, “no energy.” Which this year, I don’t wanna hear that sentence anymore. Instead, I wanna hear more sentence, “let’s make it happen.” Moreover, truly I want to see that we won’t just talk about it, but we will brave enough to walk our talk.

Last week, a few days after new year’s I had a phone call with my mom, how she concerned about my health and how she told me I should start to go back to a healthy lifestyle. Listened to what she spoke, usually I would have an excuse how busy my work schedule is bla bla bla.. Often, I even would say, “no energy, ma…” But this time, I tried to own it and just taking it on board. Therefore, I started my 2020 with daily vitamins, back to gym with light exercise, spinning class, conscious eating, more drinking water and less alcohol, replacing my coffee addiction with tea, setup priority goals, and simply picking important topic about what I would like to write for the whole year. I really want start my discipline in my personal lifestyle. I guess I’m just going to make most of it by what I have. I am done looking left or right playing comparison game and playing racing game with anybody.

So, for me personally, I think I have 3 redefinitions of success. I will explain it briefly, but this is my personal thoughts okay, you might have a different ones and it’s ok. I’m just happy to share my thoughts here. First, sustain in many aspects of life for the long term. Not for instant fame or validation anymore. I think the best events life will come eventually at the right time if I succeed to sustain what I have and make it the most. Second, it will show it’s result through constant show-up, regardless of its trials & errors. Many of us get discouraged in a short period because it seems like our hard-work not getting anywhere or our role seems invisible in class/community/work. Hold on, we will get there in time. Fail 7, get up 8. Fail today, try again tomorrow. It’ll get better if we keep showing up & trying our best. It doesn’t matter how big the result is, we contribute something no matter what. Any effort is no a small thing. Lastly, it will create an impact on people around us. As I met various people in my life, I never forget the best people who made a huge impact in my life, pushed me & believed in me until I become the girl I am today. I really think those guys are huge deals, game-changer, and rare human being. I honestly wanna be that girl, that female, that woman who made an impact on my surroundings too. I think it’s one of the best feelings in the world; when you are useful, needed, loved, celebrated, and important for some people.

Therefore, this year I’m trying so hard to throw validations in the bin and choose platforms instead. I even told to some friends in some communities I’m into that, “this year it’s fine maybe you gonna see me suck in the beginning, but you gonna see that I’m gonna keep coming and have myself progressed! :)” — Well, I’m not gonna lie to you, when I’m bad at something and see other person doing better than me, I can feel intimidated (even I can feel shit and feel not sexy at all!) but lately I tried to tap into myself to stop feeding my ego, because I do know; my head playing a comparison game. Often too, I need to remind myself that we don’t have it all together, just like that. Everything takes time & process, even things that we desired the most.

Whatever your backgrounds & goals are, please don’t define success from a narrow mind. Don’t settle for temporary happiness, especially if it’s detrimental to you. Don’t let people steal your joy by their brief judgment. Close some doors if you notice your surroundings are harmful to you. Keep going. Keep being better, not bitter.

Remember your passion x purpose x potential don’t have an expiration date. They say so many ways to Roma. Your story doesn’t need to be the same with your hero/idol, you create your own story okay.

I just hope this year we become more healthy, more energetic, more mindful, more compassionate, more generous, more useful, more kind, more happy, laugh some more, and most of it; I hope we all make it.

Also, what Peaches said above is not wrong.

Let’s level up for better years to come.

Kish.