Defining Success

I hate cockroaches. I’m not particularly squeamish about them, rather I hate them with every fiber of my being. Kind of like how Superman feels about Lex Luthor or Carrie Bradshaw feels about Payless ShoeSource.
It all started when I was twenty-three-years-old I had my first big girl apartment in Washington DC. It was a spacious studio apartment with a gorgeous view of the National Cathedral. It was perfect. Until about six months after living there when the building became infested with roaches. They would scatter when I came home at night and turned on the lights. They virtually covered the garbage chute when I threw away my trash. At night it was difficult for me to sleep because I could hear them scurrying around my bed. I called the management office daily and pleaded with them to take care of the problem. So once a week they would send someone to my apartment to spray. But the roaches would only relocate for a few days then be back with a vengeance.

I finally became so furious that I began to kill as many roaches as I could every night, pick them up and put them in a Ziploc baggie with a note: please call Nicole Winbourne, apartment 807, and let me know when you are going to fumigate the building. Then each morning I would slip the baggie full of dead roaches into the management office via the letter slot designated for rent checks. They eventually got pissed and left me a message that went something like this: “Miss Winbourne, could you please stop putting dead roaches in our management office?”

That night when I came home I went through my nightly roach ritual. In the morning I left them a baggie full of dead roaches and a note,”I will stop leaving dead roaches in your office as soon as I don’t find live ones in my apartment.”

A week later they fumigated the entire building and I never saw another roach.

I’m a long way from that 400 square foot roach motel. Each year around this time I’m reminded just how far I’ve come. I’m reminded because at the end of each year I make a list of goals for the next year. I don’t do resolutions, I make plans. I count them as victories if I’ve moved towards the goal instead of a failure if I don’t achieve them one-hundred-percent. And I know I am in a much better place in life because I can’t even remember the last time “vanquishing the roaches” was on my list.

This year as I started thinking about my list I had an interesting conversation with someone who said he felt he had made it when one of his tires blew out and he was able to have all four tires replaced. They were all ready to be changed and for the first time in his life he was able to have them all replaced without batting an eye at the cost.

I think all of us have had that “I’ve finally made it” moment. I doesn’t mean smooth sailing for the rest of our lives. But it does signify a shift from “oh my God can I support myself and my family?” to “I’ve got this.”

That is a critical moment in our lives because we can now focus on the things that really matter in life instead of just surviving. I read about a study years ago that came to the conclusion that love has the power to make you happier than money. The basic finding was that when people are in love they don’t tend think to themselves “I need more children or spouses to love than what I have right now (except if you are the Duggars or a polygamist I guess),” or “I need love that looks like the love my neighbors the Jones’ have.” When you are in love you are happy with what you have. You are fulfilled.

When you have money you can always have more of it, someone always has a bigger boat, a better car, a more elegant home. In other words, things don’t satisfy us the way love does.

My hope for you is that you are out of your roach days as well and that your life list for 2015 focuses on things that really matter – like love. Cheers!

If you like my blog you’ll love my book. Buy The Working Mommy’s Manual on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Working-Mommys-Manual-Nicole-Corning/dp/0615637418/ref=cm_sw_em_r_dp_6ZRcqb0QFT7P8_tt