what is success?
The moment you’ve been working for is finally here — how do you feel? Elated? Proud? Jumping for joy? A tear of happiness for all the obstacles you’ve overcome to get where you are?
This is a question that I’ve been thinking about a lot as the conditions of the pandemic have forced me to take a hard look at my life. With the ubiquity of “I’ve landed a new job at X” posts, or seeing people getting married, buying houses, having children, getting a 6-figure job, starting a new business… it’s hard not to compare that to your own life.
Over the past few years, there have been many times where I’ve fallen into the hole of being an insecure overachiever (source: HBR). I remember stretches of time where I felt mentally and emotionally numb, giving my time and energy to everything, working myself to the bone out of an irrational fear of “not being good enough” (for god knows who or what).
There’s one moment that stands out to me.
In 2018, I had the opportunity to lead a local chapter of an international non-profit whose volunteer base was made of students on campus. At the ripe age of 19, I was put in charge of 40 other students. I went into the position feeling “not good enough”, and that I had to prove my worth to others.
At the beginning of the year, we had set an ambitious goal to “break 100” — to close 100 “sales” to put it simply. The closest we had gotten before was around 65 sales. It became our mantra and our goal.
With any ambitious goal comes a lot of responsibility and commitment. For that entire year, I dedicated almost every single minute to this goal. I made myself available and accessible to my team, I participated in national conversations, and people from other chapters would often look to me for advice.
By November of that year, we reached this goal. We broke 100. And I felt empty. I faked the excitement and happiness for a while, because I didn’t really understand why I couldn’t feel it.
I didn’t really understand why until almost a year later. In the midst of it all, I lost touch of myself and who I was. Because I was so insecure about myself, I pushed myself to be the leader I thought I should be, rather than finding an authentic way of leading. Having people look up to that version of myself made me feel fake and disingenuous.
So, what does success mean?
What I learned from all of that was the importance of authenticity. Trying to achieve things because you see other people doing it, or it’s what you were taught growing up, or to prove your worth to others may only lead to a general sense of dissatisfaction.
We need to continuously challenge our own ideas of what success is and keep them rooted in what we value. It’s okay to view success similarly to how society views it — there’s nothing wrong with that! I just think that it’s important to understand what it means to you, with the understanding that this can change.
My current definition of success is actually something that I brought up in therapy once:
“I’m more proud of the relationships that I’ve built than anything that I’ve accomplished this year.”
What does success mean to you?
