Getting others, whose opinion you respect, to judge your accomplishments, is a very valid way to do this. Acclamation has a long a valid history.

I’ll also leave you to ponder this and see what percolates for you

One factor which comes to mind and which is important to me is the support I receive from people I respect. I operate in various spheres and almost without exception, the people who influence or judge my success in all of these consistently show appreciation. So I must be doing something (if not everything) right, and to me that’s progress.

Probably! After all, the goals we set are determined by our perceptions of what is important.

The first part of your blog, Richard, refers to the material and competitive measures of progress and to looking at others in the rear view mirror.

Measuring my achievements relatively against other people did my head in! I couldn’t see anyone in my rear view – so was I at the back of the queue? And there wasn’t anyone in front of me either – so were they so far ahead as to be out of sight? Benchmarking my progress against my perceptions of others was a hard attitude to drop, but a healthy choice.

Material measures used to be important to me. I well remember the self-satisfaction I felt when my company Ford was upgraded to a BMW. But here again, someone else will always have a better car, so now if it happens for somebody else I’m pleased for them – and remind myself of the tax they’ll be paying.

I can’t quantify my own progress on a common scale. I can only look at what I do and what I’ve achieved in my own way under my own circumstances and believe that others I have known in cushy corporate jobs probably couldn’t have coped so well if the same change had been enforced upon them.

So yes, to answer your question, my progress is probably in my perception.

Kind regards
Anna

Thank you for sharing your story. I think there are lessons there for us all.

However, knowing you can and have survived is one part of the process, but I’m not clear what it is that tells you that you are making progress… is it just your own perception? What sustains this? I think these are big issues for the self employed; particualrly, if like Cornelis, you have left the ‘Old World’ behind.

To answer your question posed at the end of your blog: I’d be really interested to know how you cope with this dilemma .. I have coped with enforced change by experiencing it.

I realise this seems an obvious thing to say, but what I mean is that I have proved to myself that I can cope with knocks and fortune reversals by doing it, rather than by planning for the “what if?” in advance. My strategy is therefore to believe in myself .. and also (harking back to a comment I made on one of your earlier blogs) to ask other people for guidance.

I don’t mean to be glib, either. In some cases coping with the practical and self-esteem issues raised by a turn for the worse can be extremely hard.

In my early career I was made redundant several times and on each occasion was able to find a new job and move on with confidence. Then in my early thirties I suffered a devastating blow, which KOd me big time. What lay behind it was so nasty and undeserved that my confidence in myself and my trust in others was utterly shattered, and to my further despair I found I couldn’t pick myself up as I had done previously. That was when I turned self-employed.

Although the benefits of self-employment were immediately evident to me, it took over a decade for the emotional scars of those events to begin healing. To be honest, I thought they would haunt me forever! But this year I believe I have come out the other side (and it’s all about perception, after all) so although recovery took much longer than I would have liked, I have survived the experience and thereby proved myself to myself again.

Kind regards

Anna

I have to confess, the reason for this blog, is that I struggle with this from time-to-time. Sustaining one’s energy and focus is easier when you know that you are making a positive difference

Great blog and I enjoyed the questions but do we have to cope with measurements? If we let go….. the journey will be a true journey, everything that happens, happens at the right time, at the right place, and I have stopped counting things.

Once decided to take the journey instead of big offices etc all these “old world” measurements means simply nothing, nothing leads to nothing in my humble opnion, just look what happened during the down-turn.. all these lost souls, having no clue what to do and they tend to seek “justification”..but again they have created nothing….These ‘Old World’ has always an end result, in this case… nothing.

So I focus, in the last few years, in making the difference, if I look,for example, at some testimonials I have received from former guests, network-friends then I am very proud of “Doing Good” in Absolute Freedom. The best part is: There is no End-result… Every time there is “just” the next result, and all possibilties are left open for futher development for the better, in every situation, case or friendship.