Success is consistently doing what you said you would do with clarity, focus, ease, and grace. Success, seen this way, is an inside job. You don't compare yourself to anyone else. You don't even look at whether what you're doing is big or small. You look instead at the quality of your action and of your experience.

Each of us operates on three levels. The first is who we pretend to be. Underneath who we pretend to be is who we're worried we are. The third aspect of ourselves lives at the center: who we really are.

Would you prefer to be known for your complaints or your contributions? Your issues or your ideas? Your drama or your dreams? Your reasons or your results?

Are you green and growing or ripe and rotting? This quote from McDonald's founder Ray Kroc neatly sums up our need to continuously innovate and create in our lives.

As a man's real power grows, and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower, until at last he chooses nothing, but does only and wholly what he must do. - Ursula LeGuin