“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” – George Bernard Shaw

“I will be happy when I will have had earned one million dollars,” he says.

“I will start a new career when my children leave home,” she says.

“We will eat right after losing weight on that diet,” they say.

“I will feel content about my life after my business grows enough to give me personal freedom,” she says.

Are you condition your happiness, well-being, personal freedom, contentment about your life or taking care of yourself with a statement such as those above? Are you telling yourself things like “I will be happy when…” or “I can’t be happy until…” to feel successful?

Most of your goals that are ending with “when” or “until” are toxic, harmful goals. Why? Because those types of goals are stopping you to be today the best person that you can be. You might feel constrained and not take the actions you need to take to achieve what you want: to be happy, build a career, feel free, and so on.

Those kind of goals, are forcing you to put your life on hold. They are imprisoning you into a present that you don’t like and prevent you enjoy the present and the potential that you DO have.

How to feel successful starting today

1. Act as if you already achieved what you want

“We will eat right after losing weight on that diet,” they say.

For example, to stay and be successful on a diet is a hard thing to do and most times unachievable. Yet, people are conditioning their happiness, health, and general well-being by completing some, almost impossible task.

What if you start acting and behaving right from this minute as if you have already done it? What if you act and behave as if you already have what you want, and now it is just a matter of maintaining that something?

• How are you speaking/ treating yourself?
• What is your attitude toward self and others?
• Who are the people that you keep around?
• What rituals and habits you have?
• What have you changed about yourself and your life to get here?
• How confident and empowered do you feel?
• What beliefs do you hold in your heart and mind about yourself?

You don’t need to wait to achieve something to start enjoying life, feeling happy and increase your general well-being, start today!

Now, going back to our example, wanting to lose weight; acting and behaving as if they’ve already done it, helps people to adopt the right attitude, the mental strength, rituals, and habits for a lifetime. The primary purpose of a diet is long term success. Is it not? It is useless to lose weight if your actions and behaviors don’t change and the more important ones are those that people are doing after losing the excess weight. Therefore, if they start today having those actions and behaviors, they lose the weight and keep it off.

2. Give yourself the merit and credit for what you’ve already accomplished

Your unconscious mind tends to play down what you achieve just to make you want more, to force you to set another goal and aspirations, to dream of new and exciting things.

Play up your successes and nurture your desire to be content with yourself. Allow yourself to view how great you are in the mirror of your achievements.

Your confidence to do great things comes mostly from your past successes. Play them up and reassure yourself that you can!

3. Optimism

Use your optimism to keep on moving forward. What you believe about yourself, you become.

A self-fulfilling prophecy goes both ways: the positive way and the negative.

Optimism, when it comes to success, is like a positive self-fulfilling prophecy. Whatever statement and beliefs you have regarding who you are and what you can achieve, you will achieve because your unconscious mind doesn’t allow you to be a liar.

It takes you on the right path, gives you the right attitude, unveils for you the actions and behaviors needed to get where you want to be.

Yes, it could happen to hit some bumps on the way. However, put the optimist in you to work. See and notice how far you have come. Search for the positive part of the things that are coming your way.

Be confident that, as you’ve done in the past, you have the ability and strength to conquer no matter what life puts in front of you.

To be a winner and to feel successful in life doesn’t mean to be the first, it means to get to live the life of your dreams, the life you desire and deserve.