Success On Your Terms: What It Means and How You Can Create It in Your Life and Work Starting Today

One of the things that excites me the most about my work is that I get to help women like you create a business that supports your life.

It looks different for everyone, but it typically involves being able to…

• Have more space in your life to enjoy family, fun, travel, hobbies, health, or whatever YOU want most
• Know that you can create more success without working harder or longer hours
• See that you don’t have to compromise success or money to have a great life

It sounds amazingly, wonderfully perfect, right?

But maybe it feels impossible for you right now… or at least not as simple to make happen as you’d like.

Between work, family, friends, fun, and everything else, it can feel like there’s never enough time to do all the things you really want to do.

Well… I know it’s possible to both succeed professionally and have a great life. You can have both the success you want and have the life you want. And you can do it on your terms.

Click to TweetYou can have both the success you want and the life you want. And you can do it on your terms.

I believe it so much I’m talking about it every single day this year.

If you want to build a thriving online business (or be a successful professional who works for someone else) while also having a life outside of work, we’re going to make it your reality this year. Keep reading to see how.

First… A Name Change

Over the past year and a half, you’ve heard me talk a lot about “Success Without Sacrifice.” Recently, I changed the name to “Success On Your Terms.”

Why? I decided to do something I never thought I’d do: start a podcast!!

Before submitting my show to iTunes, I learned that “success without sacrifice” was trademarked, and I didn’t want to risk using a phrase that could get me and the show shut down.

My goal is to share a new episode with you every day. (Even though it freaks me out a bit to think about creating 365 episodes in just 1 year!)

In the podcast, I share simple strategies to help you create success on your terms, some personal anecdotes from my life, plus insights from women like you who want to live and work on their terms.

In case you missed the first few episodes, here’s a quick peek at what I’ve covered so far.

I Hit Rock Bottom

My journey to “success on your terms” began almost 20 years ago when I was in college. After two years of trying to stay on top of my school work, hold down a 20-hour/week job, do regular volunteer work, and maintain extra-curricular commitments, I hit rock bottom.

You can listen to the whole (short) story here:

I finally realized that there was no way I could continue living my life as I had been (depressed, bulimic, exhausted, and burnt out), so I experimented with productivity and time management tools, mindset shifts, and setting boundaries.

The results were so profound that within 6 months my grade shot up from barely passing to mostly As. I was sleeping 8 hours a night. And I was happier than I’d been in a long time.

I brought those same skills with me to the corporate world and then into my own business, where I started to refer to this method as “success without sacrifice,” and now “success on your terms.”

What Is Success On Your Terms?

It’s important to know that I’m not here to tell you what success should look like for you.

That could be a position or title, it could be a certain amount of money, or it could be a measure of impact you have on the lives of others. Basically, success is however you define it.

“On your terms” is a catch-all phrase I use to describe the parameters around which you’ll create your success.

For example, you want to achieve success, however you define that, while also…

• Spending nights and weekends with family
• Exercising 5 days each week
• Taking a yearly vacation
• Sleeping 8 hours every night
• Or whatever matters to YOU

I talk about honing in on your personal definition of success on your terms in these two episodes:

If You’re Having Trouble Defining Success On Your Terms

Figuring out your own definition can be challenging, especially because we’re so used to society telling us what should be important to us.

I want to help you figure out what you want and guide you to create that for yourself with these five approaches.

The first and easiest (and my favorite) approach is gentle awareness, which allows you to simply notice where you’re living in and out of alignment with success on your terms.

You can also define your values (narrowing them down to your top two or three), notice where you’re “should-ing” yourself, give yourself permission, and talk with friends.

I talk through each of these in detail in episode 2 and episodes 5 through 9.

Experiment with each of these approaches to define what Success On Your Terms means for you. From there, you can begin to gradually transform your current reality so that it reflects what truly matters most to you. (I’ll dig into this more next week.)

What Am I Missing?

Tell me…

Have you subscribed to the podcast? Which episode is your favorite so far?

How do you define Success On Your Terms for yourself?

What questions do you have for me about creating success on your terms? I’m open to ideas for future shows.

Fill me in by leaving a comment below!