The Findings - #16 There's a new measurement of success.

Another construct I had to let go of was how I measured success. In radio, success is measured by the size of the audience. It is so important that the hour is divided into quarter hour measurements. The radio station with the biggest audience won and the DJ with the most listeners won and that made the sales people win because then they could raise their prices and make more money. It was the quintessential ripple effect so the pressure to be #1 was pretty intense.

I didn’t realize how influential this deeply seeded training was in my current life until I had a realization in the summer of 2017, after I had officially finished my 100 days of meditation (though I continued the practice after I was “done”). In August of that year, I created an event where I talked about "The Confusion Experiment" at the Alaska Center for Spiritual Living in Anchorage. The day before the event I was terribly anxious. I’ve learned that when I ask my inner Wise One a question it answers me, so I asked, “What is going on here? Why am I freaking out?” I realized that my mind was taking that audience-size measurement of success from so long ago and laying it over this new experience. It was doing exactly what it was supposed to do and that’s exactly when I realized that measurement was no longer valid. I understood where it was coming from and why it was active; however, I also realized that I wasn’t there to measure the success of my talk based on how many people were in the seats. Was I affirming a full house? Of course, but my awareness of what was causing my anxiety allowed me to unwrap myself from  it. I was then able to redefine my success as something internal - the expansion of my consciousness and the opening of my heart.

I also decided to redefine what success meant and declared I was already successful simply because I was doing it! It was the first Facebook Live event I’d ever done, and I was ecstatic that I was willing to be so out of my comfort zone.  It was a huge learning curve for me and just having that work was such a success. I had over 124 views while live and to this day over 500 people have watched that 52 minute video. As soon as I released the audience, it showed up!

From the book, "The Confusion Experiment."