Redefining Success: 2 Ways You Can Shift Your Mindset
First, a story…
I’m a senior in high school. Achievement and success are the name of the game. I’ve been taking college level classes since I was a sophomore. I became the Editor-in-Chief of the school newspaper as a junior. I have straight A’s and a 4.0 GPA. I’m senior class president. I’ve been accepted at every college I applied to for admission.
But I’ve had my eye set on one University for years. It’s the best of the best in my state when it comes to public universities. It’s famous for it’s academia, famous for it’s NCAA sports, famous for it’s journalists (which is what I wanted to be) and famous for it’s choosiness.
I was chosen. And I was a Chosen One because I worked hard to get there. I was Chosen because I did everything I could to be a successful student and person, and going to this University was going to prove it. Being able to say, “I go to THIS university” and eventually “my degree is from THIS school” was going to be the first in a long line of success markers in my life. I enthusiastically accept their acceptance of me, turning down the other schools that I liked but weren’t as prominent or well-known as this one.
I arrive at orientation the summer before college starts. I feel strangely uneasy. I push the feeling aside. I walk around with other almost-freshmen, looking at the campus that will become my home and I don’t see myself in any of it. None of it resembles me. None of it feels like it fits. I push the feelings aside. Everyone feels that way, I bet. And successful people don’t let “feelings” interfere with their goal.
I arrive in the fall to stay. I unpack my dorm. I attend class. I make a few friends.
I hate it.
The gorgeous, massive, manicured campus; the impressive, hallowed halls; the throngs of happy, thriving students…I don’t see myself in it. Worse, I don’t feel myself in it. I don’t feel anything but dread, constant and unyielding. My anxiety rises with the immediacy and power of a flash flood. Depression accompanies the flood and settles in for a long haul. I cannot push those feelings aside. An explosive panic attack seals the deal.
I drop out. I drop out and take the semester off (I have more than enough college credits from my AP classes anyway) and I apply to a smaller university I’d overlooked before because it wasn’t “famous” enough, and get accepted starting in the spring. I love it the moment I set foot on campus.
This is last time I ever accept society’s definition of what makes you “successful.” This is the first time I ever look at the definition I have for “success” and ask:
…how much of this was my idea?
So what is “success?”
It is “a favorable or desired outcome; the attainment of wealth, favor or eminence [position of prominence or superiority].” According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, anyway.
A couple of things for your consideration:
According to this definition, I was not, technically, wrong when I believed that my Chosen university would mark my “success;” it was certainly prominent and my goal was to attain a superior collegiate education by attending (thereby securing “favor” for myself down the line).
Merriam-Webster is self described as “America's foremost publisher of language-related reference works.” Even in 1843, when the company bought the rights to Webster's magnum opus, it was called: An American Dictionary of the English Language, Corrected and Enlarged.
I pointed out #2 because I was a little surprised when I looked up the definition. Wealth? Prominence? Superiority? Surely the dictionary was going to be more objective or all-encompassing than that, right?
I was surprised until I looked up the history of Merriam-Webster and saw the word America. That’s when I realized:
This definition of success is decidedly Western. And that is unsurprising.
Western culture is a hustlin’ culture. It values hard work. It values earned outcomes. It values productivity. It values attainment. It values achievement. It glorifies these things, actually. It glorifies them so much, in fact, that these “values” become “necessities,” and these necessities become the yard stick by which we are taught to measure our worth.
These “values” have been put on pedestals and raised to great heights in Western society. Consciously or (more often) unconsciously, we’ve been brought up with those messages in mind: to be valued, you must be successful; to be successful, you must be wealthy, prominent or superior; to be wealthy, prominent or superior, you must work hard, earn your outcomes, be constantly productive, attain the markers of wealth, and achieve endlessly.
As you can likely see, this is a flawed system. And that rarely becomes more obvious than it does on the inevitable day when you find yourself caught up in the cogs of the wheel on the machinery of “Western success.” And when you find yourself there, it’s usually as a confused, overworked, unsatisfied, burnt-out, shell of a person; steeped in anxiety, feeling unfulfilled, questioning your worth and wondering, maybe for the first time ever…
“How much of this was my idea?”
So if I may offer a couple of alternate definitions…
#1: Success is subjective.
What if — and stay with me here — YOU decided what it meant to be successful?
What if the widely-accepted western definition was not actually your definition?
What if, instead of wealth, prominence and/or superiority, your definition of “success” was…making enough to pay bills, go out to eat a few times a week and…that’s it?
What if success wasn’t a 3- or 4-bedroom house, but rather a smaller space with leftover funds you can put toward something you enjoy?
What if it wasn’t related to money at all?
What if success was only working four hours a day to spend more time on a favorite hobby or with cherished loved ones?
What if success was having enough time to walk your dog and sip your coffee in the morning without having to rush off to work?
What if success was being your own boss so that you could plan out your own days?
What if success wasn’t related to your profession at all?
What if success was keeping all of your indoor plants alive and getting to read a nice book in the middle of your own personal greenhouse menagerie?
What if success depended more on how relaxed you felt? Or how kind you were able to be to yourself on a day when you felt down?
What if success wasn’t dependent upon how “productive” you were, how “hard” you worked, how much you “got done,” how much you were “giving back” or how much “time you put in?” What if it wasn’t your title at work, the sum of money in your bank account or how “impressive” you seemed to other people?
What if, instead, it was how genuine your friendships became? How close you were to the mountains or the ocean or the desert or your other favorite places? What if it was how many adventures you went on, how many hilarious memories you made, how many things you said a wholehearted yes to? What if success was just collecting stories of a life well-lived instead of a life well-financed or well-displayed?
What if success was just feeling quiet within your own mind and content within your own life, no matter what it looked like from the outside? No matter how far away it was from the idea of "wealth, prominence or superiority?”
Let’s say you take a look at the Western definition of success and decide it isn’t yours. You examine it and decide it doesn’t resemble you. It doesn’t fit. So you intentionally take stock of what makes YOU feel “successful.” In your job, in your business, in your personal life, overall…
What does it look like? What does it feel like? And most importantly, how does it look and feel to YOU?
Because you DO get to decide. You get to look at what our society “expects” and decide to show up differently. Because success is subjective. And you get to choose whether or not the Merriam-Webster definition (i.e. the Western definition, the American definition) applies to you.
And if it doesn’t, you get to make up your own.
#2: Success is “enough.”
This is my current subjective mindset when it comes to success. And holy wow, it’s been a game changer.
When I started my business, I thought I needed to build a six-figure empire (minimum). That’s what all of my small business idols did. That’s also what they sold me: How I Went from Zero to 500K In a Year or You Could Be Making So Much More Money, I’ll Show You How or some other iteration of how I could “do more to make more.” How I could “scale up.” How I could “expand.”
I quickly realized that those goals didn’t feel like they “fit” me, but it didn’t stop me from thinking that they should. Like so many others, I assumed that I was wrong and the goal was right. I assumed that the fact that I wasn’t striving for those particular goals meant I lacked motivation and I lacked hustle and I lacked work ethic. I was a bad business owner. But I’d fix it! I’d work harder and longer! I’d apply myself and achieve business success! Don’t worry!
Except the kicker was: I had enough. I was making more money than I’d made at previous jobs working for someone else. Not six-figure money, but…enough money; I paid my bills, I could travel, I could pay off bits of my student debt. I had a good business model. I was structured enough to be self-employed and accountable. I was organized enough to make my clients’ lives 100x easier. I was happy with all of this.
But I couldn’t just be happy with enough — could I? Because then…what would drive me? What would I be striving for? How would I set goals to work toward if I’d already met them? How could I possibly make six figures if I was happy with five?How on earth would the world continue to turn if I wasn’t strapping it to my back like a horse pulling a cart, and manually dragging it through every rotation?
It took a solid year (a YEAR, you guys) of repeated anxieties for me to think:
Wait a minute.
I’m working towards six-figures because more wealth is supposed to make me happy.
But…I’m already happy.
I’m trying to figure out how to make “scaling up” and “expanding” sound appealing.
But…I’m happy as a one-woman show, working intimately with my clients.
So maybe - just maybe - it’s not that I don’t have enough chutzpah or hustle to make these goals work. Maybe the goals and I just don’t fit together. And it’s not because I’m not “successful” enough.
It’s because I already HAVE enough.
“When we buy into the promise that more is better, we can never arrive…sufficiency isn’t an amount at all. It is an experience, a context we generate, a declaration, a knowing that there is enough, and that we are enough.”
This was said by Lynne Twist in her book The Soul of Money (highly recommend), and taken deeply to heart by yours truly, and it’s on repeat in my head, every day, all day long.
Twist talks at length about the concepts of scarcity and sufficiency (which she calls “the great lie” and “the surprising truth,” respectively), but her message above resonated with me and shook me right out of my endless anxiety about whether I was doing/accomplishing/succeeding enough as a business owner.
We tend to skip over Enough in the continual hunt for More or Better. We are a striving, hustling society and as a result, we breeze right by Enough without noticing because — plot twist — we’re not actually allowed to arrive there. We’re taught that Enough is boring. It’s settling. Why would you have Enough when you could have More?
The trap is that when we achieve More, it becomes the new Enough. So onward we press, to the next More, without knowing or recognizing the transformation More will undergo when we achieve it — into exactly what we thought we needed.
For example, let’s say we reach a goal — we’ve arrived! We finally have Enough! Sometimes we pop the champagne. Sometimes we take an evening or a weekend or a vacation to celebrate. Then — with our standards even higher than before, having achieved our last goal towards success — we set a new one (because we must always be working towards something). A Better goal. One that will yield More. Because having met our last goal, our new-found success is now only Enough.
“Once we buy into the promise that more is better, we can never arrive.”
I don’t make six-figures. I have no plans to scale up. I am not currently interested in More.
But my definition of success doesn’t require any of those things, anyway. To me, at this moment in time, success in life is this:
Having free time.
Having autonomy.
That’s it.
This means that those afternoons where I walked my dog instead of batching content, then came home, got online, saw the “scale up” and “hustle” posts that would guarantee me six-figure success, and kicked myself for being so lazy? I was actually just engaging in my version of success.
Could I book back-to-back website builds 50 weeks out of the year? Yes. Could I attend networking events 2-3 times per week? Yes. Could I write two blogs a week instead of two blogs a month? Yes. (Without going crazy? No.) Could I be active in more membership groups and online social forums? Yes.
Could I be making more money? Definitely. Could I put more work into becoming more recognized, more notable, more prominent? You bet. Could I engage in and achieve the Western definition of success? Why yes, I believe I could.
And yet, when I have the time to do these things…I walk my dog. I experiment in the kitchen. I go for hikes with my husband. I have coffee in the middle of the day with my mother. I read books and listen to podcasts. I write blogs and morning pages and passages for my own book. I build shelves for the bedroom from a tutorial I found on Pinterest. I drink my coffee nice and slow.
Because that is success to me. Free time to slow down and enjoy my life, and the autonomy to be able to choose that option in the first place — and I’ve achieved it. For the time being, I don’t want to ask for more. I want to sustain and be grateful and enjoy. I want to settle into the enough-ness instead of feeling like I’m settling for it, because Enough is actually an incredible achievement.
And when I can silence the sound of society in my head, I realize I have — you guessed it— enough. And therefore, I am a success.
Let’s wrap it up, dear
Is your idea of success making six (or seven or eight) figures? When you think of that goal, that definition, does it fit? Does it feel good? Does it light a warm, bright fire in your chest? Does it make you smile and fuel your visions and feel like it resonates?
THEN DO IT. Go for it. Live your life by that standard of success and make amazing things happen! There is nothing wrong with that definition if it fits you. Our definitions are never right or wrong; they are simply ours, and we get to define them and adhere to them and change them as we see fit.
On the other hand: Does that definition cause you to stress, to panic, to feel less-than?
Then redefine it. Be intentional yet gentle about it. Question what you have been told and sold until it makes sense, until it resembles you, until it fits. The power is yours and the expectations of others (even Merriam-Webster) are none of your business.
Consider the outlandish possibility that — right here and right now, with what you have, where you are — you are, in fact, enough.
You are a success.
