A few weeks ago I friend told me she was “so proud of my success” – which gave me pause. Was I really successful? By whose measure? Why did it make me uncomfortable to consider myself successful?
And in that same day I stumbled across the notion of a continuum of success – that we move from Survival to Stability to Success and finally to Significance. I thought it would be a fine thing to blog about – but the reality is that I’ve struggled for two weeks to pull together some cogent thoughts about the topic.
None the less – the time has come to share. So this post will be a combination of known and unknown, comfort and discomfort. And with that, I’m hoping to spark a conversation so that your thoughts can help me make more sense of this topic.
So first on the continuum – which makes a modicum of sense to me. Hard to consider yourself successful if you are struggling with basic needs. Maslow taught us that long ago. But can significance ONLY come at the end of this chain? I think of Viktor Frankl, who managed profound significance in an environment in which was clearly all about survival. And might success, when in the midst of very difficult situations, be survival?
I do think that it is easy to get stuck in any of the levels – when surviving, it is difficult to focus on anything but merely making it one more day. When in stability mode, we often make do with the mediocre marriage, the job that pays the bills but doesn’t feed the soul, or the product that is “just good enough” rather than risking all this “stability” for what we yearn for. And I see plenty of folks who are so consumed with material success that they fail to ask, “so what?”
It strikes me that the leap from stability to success may be the most difficult – as things are at least not in crisis mode. Why give up a good paying job for uncertainty? Why buck the trend and follow your heart when you can have a regular paycheck and a benefit package? Why risk a proven product for something fresh and compelling, if the old product brings in revenue?
Each of us seems to approach the path to success in different ways. There are folks that are stuck – clearly stuck. I can identify – I’ve been stuck far too often. And there are folks that are thrashers – that ping pong between survival and success. They make it big; they lose it all. They have the perfect marriage; they squander it for a brief fling. And there are folks on a trajectory – continually focused on forward movement to a better place and willing to move forward in spite of uncertainty or fear, willing to do the work, to stay focused, to fight the internal battles, to overcome doubt and to take a risk and leap of faith. It is that person I strive to be.
Yet the bigger question underlying all of this is the definition of success. Traditional metrics used to define success tend to be:
- Money and it’s manifestations (as it’s measurable)
- Externally driven – stemming from a market economy that demands consumers buy “stuff” – and spending lots of money to have us believe that more stuff is better
- Externally defined – the right degree from the right college leading to the right job and knowing the right people and hobnobbing in the right social circles
Success on your own terms is harder to measure. We don’t have hard metrics for the things that also matter (and may matter more) like:
- Physical and mental health
- Social connections – friends, family, community
- A life of meaning or creativity
- Our overall well-being and that of others
- Happiness and joy
- Giving back (AKA: Significance)
When I measure success by my own terms, I feel wildly successful. Work that fills me up. Great health. Friends and family. Gardens and a home I love. So, yes, I am successful. Which then begs the question of what I can do to move to significance? That is the quest.
So, I’m curious to know:
- What does success look like for you?
- How do you measure it?
- What mode are you in? Survival, stability, success or significance?
- Are they linear?
- How do you get “unstuck”?
- Is success a destination or a way of being?
2 Responses
Another thought-provoking blog for us to ponder….thank you for stimulating our thoughts and creating the opportunity for us to reflect on our personal definitions of “success”.
In addition to your personal definitions of “success”, I would like to add a dimension of “spiritual”….in whatever terms that means to each individual. Each of us needs to reflect on our own spiritual well-being to also be “successful”. This is not to infer that you must be affiliated with any particular religious institution; but rather, how do define your own faith in the One who created us and sustains us? I am open to those who may be aethiest or agnostic as I do not want to shove my personal beliefs on you. I am willing to share what my faith means to me and allow you to decide for yourself.
This then leads me to the dimension of “significance”. How can I use my life (experiences, gifts, talents, time) to make other’s lives better? Some may define this as our “mission” in life.
While I may not be “successful” in the eyes of the world around me in terms of the external measures of success, I can still be content (e.g. happiness and/or joy) with my life and share that contentment with those around me.
I wish everyone well on their own journey to success and significance.
This also set me to thinking. My first thought was yes, Kris has achieve success, and significance. And then the why….
Significance is something I don’t think we can measure for ourselves. Of course you can to a certain extent however it is difficult to tell when you touched someone at the right time and changed the path of tieir lives. There is a gentleman in Warsaw who counts the time he spent working for my parents as a turning stone in his life. That was significant. And a young man who told me many years later that the airplane ride I gave him a s a young man “hanging out at the airport” propelled him to Purdue where he graduated as an airline captain. Perhaps you just made someone’s day just a little briter with a smile. We rarely know all the places we add significance to someone’s life.
As for success, it is simply an inner joy. You wake up happy with where you are in life and go to bed at night satified with your life and looking forward to the challenges of the next day. You’ve found your soul’s desire and you are living the life you were meant to live. It doesn’t have to do with money, it’s that inner “vibration” of peace with your life that let’s you sit back and say “life is good” and truely mean it.