Okay baby, let’s talk straight here…millions of people will wake up wanting to be successful and thousands of “successful” people will wake up wondering: “What is my purpose?”, “Why am I not happy?”, or “Why am I not fulfilled?”

Success is great, and yet, so many of us are still not flourishing. Flourishing is being grateful for where we are and working to prosper and thrive. When we flourish, it is because of the little steps we consistently take to be the people we want to be.

To truly flourish, you have to start at the beginning…

Check the Ego and Start at the Beginning

Here’s the thing, flourishing is about appreciating where you are and working towards mastery and excellence of where you want to be. You can’t reach any of those traits without starting at the beginning. We can call it checking your ego, humility, or something else, but you have to determine who you want to be if you want to flourish. Often, it means starting at the beginning.

I get it, nobody relishes being told they have to start at the beginning. It’s like waiting in a long airport line, finally reaching the counter and being redirected to the end of another long line. But you have to learn to be the person you want to be to flourish.

Where do you start? Take a lesson from elite performers that work towards excellence and mastery. They have role models, coaches, and experts to help them become the player or performer they are striving to be. If they have these, so should you! Every trait a coach or role model has will not work for you, but somebody you admire is someone who you would, in part, want to emulate. The only way to begin is to recognize that you are a novice, that you don’t have all the answers, but you do have a desire to learn and to put those practices in action.

It all starts with checking your ego and being the learner.

Define what is Sacred to You

I’m sure the reason many of us don’t act on goals or desires (and don’t flourish!) is because we convince ourselves that it involves too much sacrifice!

The word sacrifice stems from the word sacred. Brene Brown has written about this in her book Daring Greatly. Having a purpose or striving to flourish means making sacrifices, but think of it like this – flourishing is about making things and people – sacred.

The question to help you find and move towards flourishing? What is sacred to you?

Your answers are things you are willing to be or hope to be defined by. These may not be things that are currently a part of your actions, but that is where humility and learning come in to play. (Remember – small steps towards honoring what is sacred.)

There is one more part of this discussion around sacrifice and that is being sacred to others. If you are making things and people sacred, you need to be sacred to others. These are the people who will support you, who will be loyal to you, and who will throw you a lifeline when you need it most. While you sacrifice for them, they in turn will sacrifice for you. Surround yourself with people who make you sacred. Redefine, eliminate your relationship, or put barriers between you and those who do not.

If we haven’t practiced humility/beginning as a learner and defined what we hold sacred, we will at best only power through difficult life events and those events will define us. Identify what is sacred, take steps daily to honor what is sacred, and when sorrows and troubles arise, you will find the steps will leave you resilient.

Excellence

To flourish is about striving for excellence in all parts of your life. That means aiming and working for excellence, but understanding and forgiving yourself when you are not always excellent.

Striving for excellence doesn’t mean being perfect, it does mean working and holding firm to what is sacred to you and in doing so, you are working to create and flourish in your environment.  You will stumble, I will stumble, we will have to be humble and start new sometimes, we will have to sacrifice, but we can continue work for excellence.

It is the little steps we take along the way that define who we are. It is in those small moments where we have the humility to truly learn, where we make something sacred and where we strive for excellence that we become the people we want to be and flourish.