I was chatting with my son the other day about the definition of success. When I was his age, success for me was having graduated college, having gotten a steady job in the discipline I’d studied. But, the reality is, those were not my definitions of success. They were what society, what my family, expected of me.
In my 30’s, success was getting married, starting a family, and climbing the corporate ladder. It’s funny, while Tony and I knew that we would be together forever, we never talked about marriage. It was our families and friends who obsessed about it.
When I was laid off shortly after the birth of my son, those societal norms did a number on me. While the corporate line was that the economy had shifted and the business needed to contract and rethink its business model in order to survive (both of these were objective truths), I bought into the belief that if I had worked harder and been indispensable, then I wouldn’t have been laid off. For me, success became being indispensable.
In the jobs that followed, that’s exactly what I did. Taking on key projects on top of my workload, wearing like a badge of honor the fact that my days started at 4:30 am and ran until 11 pm. While my career flourished, my family and my health suffered.
It wasn’t until my 50’s, that I really began to grapple with the question of what success means to me. I am no less ambitious than I was in my 20’s but how I achieve that ambition has continued to evolve. There is a saying, “We are not meant to live to work. We are meant to work to live.” I had always understood this to mean that our work is the place that gives us the money to do the things we want to do (outside of work). I believe this is too narrow an interpretation.
At this point in my life, success for me means having impact and experiencing joy. I love the work that I do. The feedback I get from the professionals, teams, and organizations about the transformation they have been able to accomplish through our work together is truly humbling. And, at the same time, I am writing this blog as I sit in my back yard enjoying this beautiful summer day. This, to me, is success.
How do you define success? Have you thought about it? Where does that definition come from? How has it evolved? These are questions worth asking yourself.
