Generally at seven in the morning we have the beach and the ocean to ourselves. But this morning when we got to the place we hop in, there were 3 swimmers getting into the water at the same time. No problem, there’s plenty of space for all of us, right?

Now Jim and I are pretty new at swimming a mile (we’ve been doing it for about 6 weeks) and we’ve never actually been in a situation where we could compare our pace to someone else’s. For us it takes about 17 minutes to swim one length of the beach, but we have no idea how long it takes the average swimmer. So we have been feeling really good about ourselves in our ability to get into the water everyday and perform such a feat of endurance.

Back to this morning: We hopped in the water and we are swimming along as usual, when the three swimmers blow by us, even the slow one makes it by us with no problem! I’ve always been a little bit competitive and I have to admit that my ego was bruised a little bit in observing and admitting that I couldn’t compete with their speed or performance in the water. So does that make me feel bad about myself? Yes, actually it did at first. But as I got to thinking, this experience in the water made perfect sense in terms of how we deal with life in general.

Let’s say you have a goal for the future, maybe to operate your own business and make a healthy income. You might be chugging along and feeling really great, making progress toward your goal, and having a good time in the process, when you stop and look around you. Suddenly you see all these other people doing the same thing, maybe even in the same type of business that you want to run, but they already have steady customers, and their businesses make a million dollars a year. Granted there might be a thousand different stories for why they are where they are, maybe they started ten years ago, maybe they inherited the business from their uncle, maybe they just have an exceptional talent for the business. Regardless of the story-line, you still suddenly feel that you are behind, that you need to catch up, or give up because you’ll never be where they are.

This is just like in my swim where I compared myself to the other more advanced or talented swimmers and beat myself up for not being as fast as they were. Should I stop swimming if I still enjoy it? Should you stop doing what you love because someone else might be “farther along” toward your goal? Absolutely not! You can’t live your life at someone’s else’s pace, you can only live life at your own pace. Maybe that’s why they put blinders on horses…

Swimming for 40 minutes in the ocean really gives me a lot of time to think without any distractions, well besides the waves sometimes crashing into my mouth and up my nose, the occasional translucent rainbow-colored fish swimming by, or my passing fear of sharks, (but besides these things there are hardly any distractions!)

Today while I was swimming I just couldn’t shake the thought of how we define success. For me growing up, success seemed to be defined by working hard your whole life and owning your own house. This was pretty well defined and enforced through my parents, as other people who didn’t work hard were written off as lazy and those who weren’t working toward owning their own home were irresponsible and not thinking about their future.

Then after becoming an author and observing other authors, speakers and internet marketers, success seemed to be defined by how much freedom you had, and how much money you could make in as little time and effort as possible, which is pretty much the opposite of what I grew up believing. How to deal with these inconsistencies?

It seems that at the core of both of these definitions is a fundamental belief that there is one RIGHT way to live. Mentally for many years I’ve known in my heart that this was not true, I mean somehow I’ve made it this far- living in Hawaii, still renting, no children yet, so it’s not like I’m adhering to my parents definition of success, but rather than truly embrace the idea that there is no one right way to live, I sometimes beat myself up about it, thinking maybe I just haven’t “come into success just yet.” That when I am truly successful, I will have the money, time, happiness, children and the house- the combo of both definitions of success.

What I’ve failed to really recognize is that if there is no one definition of success, that in my own right I, and you, and everyone for that matter, is a success. We have been stuck basing our lives on such narrow standards for success (even though my standards may not match yours), and that it’s the definition that may be holding you in a place of feeling stuck, or guilty, or ashamed. There are so many different ways to live your life, and in order to live the life you are dreaming about, you may need to break free of your past definitions of success.