What Am I Thankful For?

It’s taken a long while...in fact, so long that only this week I realized I am successful. I am thankful to finally have this realization.

My whole life my definition of success has been framed in business terms. From the youngest age, I have thought making it meant being on the front cover of Fortune Magazine. So I have always set the benchmark pretty high. We have been going through the grueling process of raising funds for jdeal. These discussions are pretty intense and they usually focus on the investor picking holes in your business and justifying their reason for a lower value. While that’s their business, you can walk out wondering when the Fortune front page version of success will ever come your way.

In the middle of a three-hour conference call, it dawned on me that I always tell people that true success is balance between family, community, and business. I preach that but for some reason that did not filter to my world. I realized that my success includes:

• A 20-year relationship with my husband
• Three beautiful kids – and, yes, I can boast that I just had parent teacher conferences and the teachers said whatever we are doing raising our kids is right
• Changing the special needs world in my own way – challenging the community and changing stereotypes
• Giving Caily all the opportunities in the world – I successfully manage her 20 sessions of therapy, 16 hours of life counselors, team meetings, swimming and music classes and, of course, all the paperwork and bureaucracy
• I have created an international community JICNY, hosting thousands in my home and running 220 events a year
• I successfully launchedjdeal, metroimma, and buyisraelweek in the last two years
• I am on the board of many organizations
• I also have fun enjoying all that New York has to offer – going out every night and never giving up my dream of travelling (I have now seen more than 60 countries)

So I pray for all of you that you have that moment of insight and realize that you are successful and contribute to the world. For me this insight has been really enlightening…