Beth is the picture of success. She is a 34 year old woman who has been working in public relations for the past 8 years. She has progressively risen in her career to the position she is at now: Sr. Public Relations & Communications Strategist for a multinational organization. She makes a lucrative salary, dines with high profile clients, travels regularly, has a condo in a trendy downtown neighbourhood, and drives the latest Tesla model. Her Instagram feed creates both envy and motivation to other women who desire a similar career.
But Beth doesn’t feel successful. It’s not that she wants to climb higher, it is just that where she is at in her career isn’t the successful life she envisioned. Her career demands so much of her time that she feels she has to make too many personal sacrifices in her life which leaves her feeling isolated from family and friends. Beth’s version of success includes a well rounded work/life balance where she is able to spend quality time with her family and friends, where she doesn’t feel the stress of work over the weekends, and where she doesn’t feel pressure to have dinner with people she barely knows. Sure, her jobs fits with the career path she had envisions years ago, but she feels like she could walk away from her job with zero regrets.
Success is tricky. Every individual has their own version of what success looks like. To some, Beth’s career is success, while to others it’s far from it. We can’t base our success on what someone else says. Instead, we need to seek the answer internally to discover how we identify with and define our success.
Connecting with our inner voice to clearly understand what success actually means to us takes patience, courage, and a willingness to shed social norms regarding success. It’s an exercise in identifying what we value, reflecting on what actions have made us feel good in the past, and stepping away from the comparison trap.
Know What You Value in Life & Career
Values, simply put, are the beliefs that we hold and rank at a level of importance. What we value in our lives often guides our behaviours and our decision makings. By taking the time to know what you value, you can begin to build the foundation of what matters to you, and in turn, how that equates to success. You might find that you place a high value on influencing and leading others, or that you place a high value on having a big family. How do those values fit into your picture of success. Beth, for example, is not having her family and relationship values met due to the pressure of her career, which is one of the reasons she doesn’t see herself as successful.
You can separate your values into different categories of life: Health, Finance, Career, Relationships, Community, Personal and Professional Development, and Leisure. For each category ask yourself what is important to you and what is not. Rank them out from most to least. As you begin to sift through these areas you will likely find common themes amongst them.
Appreciate Your Past Experiences & Achievements
We’ve all had moments of success in our past. Moments when we’ve felt so terrific because of something that we’ve achieved that we shined for everyone to see. We can evaluate past experiences and events to analyze why we felt those positive feelings with each passing and how, going forward, we can use it as a benchmark to measure our success.
What were those moments for you? They can be both big and small, and can come from any area of your life. Break your moments down into age groupings. Start when you were 15 and work up in 5 year increments to where you are now.
Don’t Compare Your Success to Others
It’s so easy to look around us and see other people who are ‘doing better’ which can make us start to feel inadequate. Just think of Beth. Someone who is the North American cultural picture of success feels like the exact opposite. We all have our own version of success that we simultaneously struggle and comply with. Falling into the comparison trap will only lead us down a path that doesn’t align with our values and desires.
Be True To Who You Are
Only you can determine what is important to you in life and what you want to get out of out. Ultimately, your success is your ability to reach your desired life goal. Be true to what you value and what you desire. Measure your success based on that, not on what society tells you success looks like. Success can be working as a CEO or working as a barista. Success can be travelling the world with your partner or being a stay-at-home-mom raising your 3 children – or travelling the world with your partner AND 3 children. Success is what you want it to be, you just have to take the time to figure out what that is.
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