I assume that you want to be successful, but have you asked yourself what exactly success means for you? Do you have a personally crafted definition of success that reflects your values, and not the expectations of what success should look like?
We are going to examine the invisible script running your life, your definition of success, and ask three critical questions:
- Where did it come from?
- Is it actually mine?
- Is it serving me or enslaving me?
Most of us are living with a success operating system we never consciously installed. It was downloaded during childhood, reinforced through education, and constantly updated by culture and media.
When you picture a successful person what do you see?
Our definitions of success are largely informed by:
- Family legacy and expectations
- Cultural programming
- Social comparison
- Institutional condition
The four mentioned sources of our success stories render our definition of success borrowed or imposed, having us live life from the outside in, instead of inside out. This leads to array of problems.
First, there is the Hedonic Treadmill – success that never satisfies.
The landmark study by Brickman, Coated, and Janoff-Bulman (1978) found that lottery winners were no happier than non-winners after just a few months. This demonstrates “hedonic adaptation”, we quickly return to our baseline happiness regardless of external circumstances.
When success is defined by outcomes (promotion, purchase, achievements), you’re on a treadmill where the goal posts constantly move.
The stoic philosopher Seneca wrote in letters from a stoic:
“It is not the man who has two little, but the man who craves more, that is poor”.
The second problem is what I call the Conditional Self-Worth-Trap.
When your definition of success is external, your self-worth becomes hostage to circumstances (beyond your control). Tim Kasser call this the contingent self-esteem in his book The High Price of Materialism. He wrote “ People with materialistic values hinge their self-esteem and self-worth on whether they have some rewards(money) or whether other people praise them” You’re only as good as your last achievement, your current status, your present appearance.
The third problem is the Neglect of what actually matters.
Conventional success often requires us to drop the very things that gives life meaning– presence, relationships, wonder, service, inner peace.
Tim Kasser wrote in The High Price of Materialism:
“Our psychological health depends in part on whether we feel close and connected with other people, and on whether we can give and receive love, care and support.”
According to Robert E. Lane, a political scientist, people in capitalistic countries suffer a kind of famine of warm interpersonal relationships, of easy-to-reach neighbors, of enriching, inclusive memberships, and social family life.
The conventional definition of success we run with are largely informed by values of our capitalistic culture.
Tim Kasser put it succinctly well when we wrote in his book The High Price of Materialism; “Materialistic values “crowd out” other meaningful pursuit, as the time we spend earning and consuming often means neglect of our spouses, children, friends, and community”
The fourth problem is the Health Crisis
The Harvard study of Adult Development, one of the longest-running studies on happiness (started in 1938), found that close relationships, not wealth or fame, are what keep people happy and healthy throughout their lives.
Director Robert Waldinger states: “The people who were the most satisfied in their relationship at age 50 were the healthiest at age 80”.
Yet our conventional success pursuit often sacrifice relationships on the alter of achievement.
A 2019 meta-analysis in JAMA Internal Medicine found that working 55+ hours per week was associated with a 35% higher risk of stroke and 17% higher risk of dying from heart disease.
You probably know one or two persons who work 55+ hours per week, not really to survive or to provide for their defendants, but to meet up with the expectations of success as determine by society., ironic, isn’t?
The last problem is the Spiritual Bankruptcy.
The Buddhist teaches that suffering comes from the endless desire for things to be other than they are. Note, “Endless desire”, this is at the root of productivity culture, which overlaps perfectly with the conventional definition of success.
When success is always “out there”, in the next achievement, you can never arrive. You are perpetually dissatisfied.
Now have looked at the problem associated with conventional success; we will now proceed to the solution. How can we shift from external to internal, from outcomes to process, from having to being? We will look at five mental frameworks that I am quite convinced will help you make this shift successfully.
Framework 1: Value-Based Success
Imagine you’re attending your own 80th birthday party. Your loved ones are sharing what they appreciated most about you. What do you hope they’re saying?
Are they talking about your car or your compassion?
Your job title or your presence?
Your achievement or your character?
To develop a value-based success philosophy, there are two steps you must take.
Step 1: Identify your core values (not society’s values for you)
Examples: creativity, connection, growth, service, adventure, authenticity, learning, growth etc.
Step 2: Define what success means within each value.
If connection is a core value, success might mean: “Having 3-4 relationships where I can be completely myself.”
If growth is a core value: “Trying one new thing each quarter that scares me.”
If service is a core value: “Using my skills to positively impact 100 people, this year.”
After step2, you can now craft your own definition of success which will factor in all your values.
Framework 2: Process Over Outcomes
Some things are “up to us” (our efforts, choices, character); this is our circle of influence and there are things that are “not up to us” (outcomes, others’ opinions, external circumstances); this is our circle of concerns.
Conventional success wants to be overly concerned with our circle of concern, with results, and achievements. It is not that wanting to achieve our goals is inherently bad, but the fixation on results forces us to live from the outside in, thus focusing on outcomes, a playing down process, on who we are becoming.
Framework 3: The Four Capitals Model
A holistic success definition addresses multiple life domains:
- Physical Capital: Health, energy, vitality.
With this framework, any success that will ruin your health is not worth it.
Your success metric under this capital is: “I have the energy to live fully.”
- Relational Capital: Quality of Connections:
Part of how you measure success is by the quality of connections you have, not quantity. Success that will demand that you don’t have the time or energy to nurture relationships in your life is not worth it. You want to make sure that you have people in your life you can share your feelings with, spend time with, and play with.
Your success metric under this capital is: “I have people who truly know me, and I truly know them.”
- Mental/Emotional Capital: Psychological wellbeing.
Here, success to you is contentment and peace. A job or promotion, or a gig that will ruin those, is not worth it; they are a clear NO for you.
Your success metric under this capital is: ‘I experience regular peace and contentment
- Purpose Capital: Meaning and contribution.
Your success metric under this capital is: “My life matters beyond myself”
Traditional definitions of success usually focus solely on Financial Capital while neglecting these other crucial domains.
The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index surveys hundreds of thousands of people globally and consistently finds that well-being across multiple domains (purpose, social, financial, community, physical) predicts life satisfaction far better than income alone.
Framework 4: The “Enough” Philosophy
Twist Lyne wrote in her book, The Soul of Money, “I see it in myself. For me, and many of us, our first waking thought of the day is “I didn’t get enough sleep”. The next one is “I don’t have enough time”, whether true or not, that thought of not enough occurs to us automatically before we even think to question or examine it. We spend most of our lives hearing, explaining, complaining, or worrying about what we don’t have enough of. We don’t have enough time. We don’t have enough rest. We don’t have enough exercise. We don’t have enough work. We don’t have enough profit. We don’t have enough power. We don’t have enough wilderness. We don’t have enough weekends. Of course, we don’t have enough money–ever. We’re not thin enough, we’re not smart enough, we’re not pretty enough, or fit enough, or educated or successful enough, or rich enough–ever. Before we even sit up in bed, before our feet touch the floor, we’re already inadequate, already behind, already losing, already lacking something. And by the time we go to bed at night, our minds race with h litany of what we didn’t get, or didn’t get done, that day. We go to sleep burdened by those thoughts and wake up to that reverie of lack”
Joe Dominiquez wrote in their book, Your Money or Your Life, about enough: “You have enough for your survival, enough for your comfort, and even some special luxuries, with no excess to burden you unnecessarily.
Knowing what enough is for you exempts you from the game of “more is better” and empowers you to experience deep satisfaction in life.
To define your enough, you need to answer the following questions:
- How much money is actually enough for your needs and reasonable wants?
- How much stuff is enough?
- How much productivity is enough?
- How much recognition is enough?
Once you define “enough”, you’re liberated. You can stop climbing and start living.
Lao Tzu said, “He who knows he has enough is rich.”
Epicurus made a distinction between:
Natural and necessary desires (food, shelter, friendship)
Natural but necessary desires (luxurious food, abundant possessions)
Unnatural and Unnecessary desires (fame, power, status)
True contentment comes from satisfying the first category, moderating the second, and releasing the third.
Framework 5: The Deathbed Audit.
Bronnie Ware, a palliative care nurse, wrote the Top Five Regrets of the Dying based on her experiences. The top regrets were:
- “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
- “I wish I hadn’t worked so hard”
- “I wish I’d the courage to express my feelings”
- “I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends”
- I wish that I had let myself be happier”
Notice what’s absent from this list: No regret of not making more money, not getting that promotion, not buying that house, not impressing more people, not using the latest iPhone.
To bring this home, write your own eulogy. Nor what you think should be said, but what you genuinely hope will be true. That’s your success blueprint, your personal definition of success.
I hope this made sense to you and will help you do away with the conventional success and come up with a definition of success that is yours.
To sum it up, you don’t need to accept the cultural script handed to you.
You can craft a definition of success that is authentic, liberating, and aligned with what truly matters.
You deserve a success philosophy that doesn’t drain you, but expands you.
If this helped you rethink conventional success and start crafting your own personal definition, then the work has already begun.