On Success

06 Sep 2024 | ~3 minute read

I was recently speaking to someone in work that I mentor, and she asked me what my measure of success is. This is what I told her...

So we're chatting over a coffee and talking about all manner of things (which I often do in my 1:1's with people - they're not just about work, folks!) Anyway, we got onto the topic of what we deem as being successful.

Her bar for success is extremely high - she jokes that feedback to her should be short and sweet - a simple number out of 10 on how she's doing on any given topic, and anything less than a 9 is a total failure to her.

So she asked me whether I think of myself as successful, and when that became apparent, but I didn't really have an answer for her. You see, success is a totally subjective thing.

I didn't wake up one morning, have a shower and realise "you know what, I'm successful!" It's much more complicated than that, I think.

For example, for some people -- like those who have mental health issues and have to deal with things like depression -- success may be getting out of bed in the morning and having a shower.

For others it might be landing that job at McDonald's so they can help their parents pay the bills. Then at the other end of the spectrum, nothing but being a multi-billionaire is good enough. And even then, it might not be enough.

For others, their measure of success may not be financial at all. Maybe their measure is to convert that camper van and go travelling around the world. Or maybe it's getting onto the property ladder, or passing their driving test.

That woman who works 16 hour days, and earns 250k a year. But she goes home to an empty house, has a microwave meal, then goes to bed. Rinse and repeat.

Woah, 250k is a lot of money. She's so successful, right? She might think so, but I wouldn't say so. That sounds like an incredibly sad life to me.

You see? success is such a personal thing.

My measure of success

For me, success is fluid. In the past I've had financial targets with regards to what salary I want to earn and by which age. But looking back, to me, that's arbitrary and pointless.

A much better gauge of success, for me, is one that's fluid. I tend to ask myself am I successful right now? And that could be in anything. Recently, my successes have revolved around renovating one of the stables for the chickens, and maintaining our vegetable patch.

We managed to be very successful at both (post on that in the future). Therefore I'm a success.

Right now my idea of success is very work focussed, as I recently took a promotion and I want to be successful for my team. It's too soon to say whether I'll be successful in this particular endeavour yet. We'll see.

So, back to the question I was asked - do I consider myself successful?

Well, yeah. Generally. Some days I feel very successful. Others, not so much. But I'd say things are going pretty well for me - I'm happy and I have a what I would consider to be a nice life.

To me that's a success.

What about you? What's your bar for success?

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