Where or to whom do you measure your way of living? Do you rely on yourself? Your friends? Your family? Everyone has a future image of themselves, an imaginary version that they use as a standard for determining physical and mental growth. But it’s still rather difficult to determine when you’ve actually improved yourself or not because everybody has a different opinion on how to best live life. 

You shouldn’t look any further thought, the finest counselor of life has descended upon you today with enlightening lessons about self-determination, how you can navigate through varying degrees of accomplishment, and how to achieve said accomplishments. Their divine power lets them see an issue from different perspectives and form a beautiful solution. Thus, your angel knows the right balance for everything, owing to their insightful understanding of true success. All you need to do to gain the same divine vision is to open your mind to them.

The degree of one’s ambition is dependent on self-determination

Imagine yourself as a bird that’s attempting to fly for the first time in your life. To avoid failure, you visit other bird’s nests for opinions and eventually notice the difficulty of measuring the best way to fly. Everyone is their own unique bird and will always provide testimonies on how their degree of flying is the pick of the bunch. Your angel’s main worry here is that you might listen at times and fly in a way that’s not “you”. Their measure of a good flight isn’t necessarily bad, but it may not bring out the best version for your wings.

The degree of one’s ambition and happiness are usually set on what you hear from others---the measure of a great journey, the measure of great success, everyone seems to be the expert about everyone else these days, but do they really understand themselves to begin with? This is why your angel wants you to look within yourself first before checking what’s outside the window. Your degree of success is the starting point.

Ask yourself what you want to be then think of ways you can achieve it based on personal standards. Success is subjective, it varies on people’s experiences and beliefs. Even if you think that your job at the moment is a good achievement, other people might not feel the same way. So which should you base your contentment on? The answer is what your angel identifies as “self-determination”.

Self-determination is contingent on both your spirituality and the dynamics of the social world; there’s still the need to compare your logic with society’s standards but, owing to personal spiritual principles, you choose which influences you and which doesn’t. In this case, even if society can’t imagine your job as a successful one, you can decide whether or not it matters! You have your own metric of independence and relatedness. Whatever will be the case, it will only be a motivator to start applying positive reinforcements in your motto.

Assimilation and Relatedness

Whether or not assimilating to people’s concept of success is a good habit is debatable. Your angel sees a benefit to it, however. For instance, if you decide that your parent’s opinion matters, you can use it to increase your ambition, to increase thoughts of “I can evolve further”. It’s a good way of using “relatedness” to support your autonomy. 

On the other hand, if you’re the type of person who sees “being able to fit in” as a fine degree of success, you can get satisfaction by realizing others’ ideas and hearing pride in their compliments. Fitting in within social contexts and attaining close relationships feed your intrinsic motivations. Striving for acceptance is simply another method of self-determination.

Benefits aside, your angel is advising you to input your opinions still. You can relate to others all you want but do take heed that as long as they have the final say, either nothing will ever be enough or only their perspective will matter. Only one thing is certain in the Universe: a positive outlook will always make you feel successful. If you can always find happiness and satisfaction in whatever you do, that’s the only success you need, notwithstanding what others might think of it.

Assimilating to the logic of your environment is important in some respects, but it can only take you so far much like in the events of The Legend of Icarus.

Know your ambition and adapt it to your surroundings

Now that you know how to attain your own degree of success, your angel wants you to take the next step. If you haven’t realized it, you were already portraying ambition when you asked the divine how to define it, and the reason why you wanted a definition for success was so you could achieve it. Quite the enthusiasm you have within.

In any case, the logic of your environment is still very much important because it gives you an idea of what the status quo is. But that’s all there is to it. The status quo shouldn’t be taken as the limit, it still falls to your own measure. Of course, your angel also stresses the importance of wisdom in securing your success.

Daedalus had ambition and worked it accordingly to his surroundings. If they couldn’t swim off the island, then all they needed to do was fly. The resources were limited so he made do with feathers and wax. Still, he was able to make a human fly. He knew the limitations; of wax melting under heat, and outwitted them by flying nowhere near the sun. Daedalus was the embodiment of wisdom. Icarus failed because he didn’t put the effort into contemplation.

The main takeaway here is that aiming for success is one thing, but the wisdom to reach it is another realm entirely. Process these facts into your mentality and you will surely reach your goals. Remember to ask your angel for guidance. They want you to be successful, after ll---for you to soar in the sky with them. You have more power over yourself than you realize.