Title: Your Success: Obtainable or Sustainable? Word Count: 1033 Summary: Is your success obtainable or sustainable?

We can all create moments of success by obtaining the things that causes us to feel successful in the the short term. T rue success however, comes from a deep sense of emotional fulfilment that sustai ns itself. Keywords: Success,successful,improve your life,self improvement,character,self development ,personal developmentm,business success Article Body: The desire to consistently improve your life is one of your most fundamental nee ds. That feeling that comes from knowing that everyday you are becoming more is part of your nature. Knowing that you are affecting and improving your environme nt through your own influence is immensely satisfying. It is a key ingredient in living a happy and fulfilled life. At some level we are al pursuing success of some sort. We are constantly looking for ways to have more, to be more and to ga in more, thinking that once we have it all we will be happy and life will be perfe ct. Then, we can take it easy and relax and just enjoy life. This way of thinking, this mindset, acts like a virus that can kill you. If not e motionally then spiritually. Our modern culture is filled with numerous examples of top achievers who seemingly have everything but they are deeply unhappy and constantly have to battle with the challenges within their own character. They f ail to grasp the true purpose of success. From it's latin origin, the word succe ss actually means "to advance" or "to progress" which implies that success is no t "something" you get at the end but a process that has very little to do with t he end result. From this point of view success is what will improve your life as it is what moves you forward to a better experience of life. In their pursuit of a greater quality of life most people loose sight of the rea l reason why they actually want to be successful in the first place. It is never the "things" but rather the way you believe these things will make you feel onc e you've got them. Your success will be either obtainable or sustainable. Most o f your desires will be obtainable within your lifetime but this no guarantee tha t you will be happy and fulfilled. When you strive for collecting and accumulati ng "things" you will experience very little fulfilment as you will always rely o n something external to give you the feelings that you want to experience inside you; feelings that you believe will come from having what you pursue. The real purpose of a goal is never to obtain something of material value but ra ther the qualities that you will gain as a person in your pursuit of the goal. F or you to have success that is sustainable you must develop a new mindset; a min dset that focuses not on what you must do to get what you want, but on what you must become to attract that which you want. What you become is what you get to k eep. When you shift your focus to developing your character, you can start to us e goals and success as a means to an end instead of it being the end-all and beall of life. You start to distance yourself from the need to have "stuff" in ord er to feel that sense of joy and fulfilment. Knowing that you can be successful is not enough. You want the experience of suc cess. You that feeling of success as a part of who you are as a person; as part

of your character. When your success is obtainable, when you are able to collect the things, then your experience of success rarely lasts very long. There is no consistency in the experience. So often we see amazing success stories of young achievers that reach their all their goals in a short period of time, only to b reak down emotionally soon after. The reason is that they haven't learned the ke y to lasting success which is the ability to create success in your life that is sustainable. Sustainable success is inexhaustible. It is consistent and takes c are of itself. With the qualities and attributes that you learned through the ex perience of pursuing your goal you are able to re-create any achievement as you are the source. The concept of obtainable and sustainable success is best illustrated with Aesop 's fable of the Goose and the Golden Egg. The goose as the source of the gold co uld consistently produce the gold, but the farmer out of his impatience and igno rance wanted it all and he wanted it now. So, he cut open the goose only to find out that there is nothing. The moral of the story is that you should nurture an d develop yourself in order to sustain your happiness and success. If your focus is just on obtaining goals you will not get any more "golden eggs" as the real value is in what you become and how that makes you feel. You can either obtain success or you can become it. The objective is the same bu t the mindset is very different. You can either get the "things" that will make you feel successful or you can become the source of your own success and fulfilm ent. You want lasting results and this will only come from your ability to creat e and re-create, on demand, that what you whish to experience during your time o n earth. Adopting the mentality of creating lasting success, of becoming sustain able, starts with realizing that true success comes from giving and not getting. In the giving lies the "getting" in that what you give away is what you get to experience and your experience is what you get to keep forever. Ultimately, to s ustain anything you must give and receive for this is the very nature of growth and life itself. Success is a feeling and in making that feeling part of who you are, you will never be without success and you will never be left wanting anyth ing outside of you. Let go of your need to obtain "stuff" and focus on the experience of life and th e emotional content of your life. Improve yourself by pursuing goals that will m ake of you the kind of person that manifest that which you want most. That which you obtain will eventually disappear and loose its value. That which you sustai n will grow and expand and continue to increase the quality of your magnificent life. Obtainable success is static and like anything in nature that does not gro w it will eventually die.