Laura Posey(^)
WRIGHT^
How did y ou come to be successful yourself, Laur a?
POSEY^
It took me a long time to learn to be successful and to embrace the
success I have had along the way. I didn’t come from what many people
would think of as a successful family. We didn’t have much extra
money, we didn’t have fancy houses or cars, and neither did anyone in
my family have a big, prestigious job. We were just your average
American family in most ways. From the outside, we didn’t look very
successful and I don’t think my family f elt very successful. Growing up,
I was always aware that so many others had so much more than we did
and it made me feel less successful than they.
As a result, I spent a lot of my life chasing those other people and
trying to outdo them whenever I could. I wanted better cars, bigger
houses, and fancier clothes than they had. To me, at that time, that
meant I was successful. I was also exhausted and very unhappy deep
dow n.
About five years ago, I took two weeks and went on a sabbatical to
the desert. I walked and climbed and meditated and focused on the
th ings that were important to me—the things that really moved me
emotionally, that touched me, and that made me want to get out of bed in
the morning and get excited about life. I stopped seeing my success
through other ’s eyes and started seeing it through my own.
During that time, I made a long list of the things I wanted to have,
to be, and to do and I set about acquiring them. As I came to each new
it em on the list, I checked inside myself to see if it was really something
th at would make me deeply satisfied or if it was just a toy to
temporarily amuse me. What I discovered was that the things that
made me happiest were the relationships I had with other people and
helping others find their happiness.
This became the foundation for a strategic plan to get all the things I
most wanted. I crafted those things I most wanted into a vision of
how to live my life in the most meaningful way. That vision was tested
by the question, “If I achieve this and die the day after, will I have any