Success? I forgot to define it!

I am 30 days into my 90-day Mumbai experiment. And what have I achieved?

Everything in my life pointed me towards Mumbai. Gut instinct, job loss and weird coincidences have meant that I am here. My theory is that I am here for one of three reasons:

1. Become a big Bollywood star (unlikely)

2. Find my one true love (likely)

3. I will find career success here (increasingly looking like the most likely)

I won’t lie to you, two of the first four weeks I have essentially lost to gastro. I got it, it went away, I ate something I knew I shouldn’t have, and I got it again four days later. Shit happens. Literally.

One day, in the future, I will look back on this time and it will be clear what all of this was leading to. But right now, I have no idea what is coming. I can’t see the forest for the trees. What I do know is this: almost every day I get a little sign from the universe to keep on keeping on.

In my first 30 days I have:

• Featured in two news stories. One local news story in Mumbai and one national news story in Australia  

• Been recognised on the street 3 times (from Instagram)

• Met with a casting agent who offered to sign me for acting jobs and a work permit in Mumbai.

• Been approached about another job that sounds exciting!

• Gotten six thousand new Instagram followers and over 4 million views.

• Started doing a little bit of work for one of the world’s most successful podcasts (very exciting!)

• Been on one date with a kind man.

• Attended 3 Ganpati celebrations.

• Met countless kind, funny, interesting and cool people.

Ok so, now that I’ve written that all down, I feel much better. When we’re in it, living day to day, it is so easy to feel like we’re not achieving much. Which is why I am doing this. If I tell you what I want to achieve and what I have achieved it keeps me accountable.

But I will tell you where I’ve gone wrong. Before I began all this, I didn’t write down my definition of success. What do I actually want to achieve in Mumbai? What will success look like at the end of these 90 days? I have a loose idea in my mind, but is that my definition of success or yours?

I am going to have to go backwards to go forwards. I will have a think and write down exactly what my definition of success will be at the end of the next 60 days. Because right now, I am basing whether or not I am achieving anything on how I am imagining you see me. As soon as I wrote that list of what I’ve achieved, I felt better. Because by society’s markers of success, which let’s be honest is attention on social media, I am doing very well. But am I doing well by my own standards, values, hopes and dreams? It doesn’t feel like it, and I can’t put my finger on why. . . yet.

I will report back.

But one thing I do know is, that I am having the time of my life.