CHAPTER 8
Your Definition of Success
Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself.
—Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
John Stephens grew up in a working-class family in Springfield, Ohio. His father was a factory worker, and his mother a part-time seamstress. Passionate about education and frustrated with the public school options in her neighborhood, his mother homeschooled him on and off until the age of twelve, when he started high school as a child prodigy.
His grandmother had taught him to play piano, and he began to sing in church at age seven and write songs at age eleven.
He graduated from high school as salutatorian at age sixteen. He was recruited by schools like Harvard and Georgetown but chose to attend the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated magna cum laude. His passion for education, nurtured by his mother, showed in his own dedication to his academic career, as well as in his interest in social justice and education advocacy.
John continued to pursue his passion for music in the evenings and weekends, playing in clubs in Philadelphia, Atlanta, New York, and Washington, DC.
After graduating from college, he took a job as a management consultant at Boston Consulting Group. He was known for his shy manner and excellent capability in Microsoft Excel.
A former coworker, Jane Park, raved about his skills: “I used to work with John Stephens when he was a consultant at BCG. He was lovely and brilliant and built Excel spreadsheets like there was no tomorrow. But he also seemed quiet and I would have characterized him as an introvert. He taught me how to build complex models using buttons in Excel (for predicting the likelihood of success of early-stage pharmaceuticals). He always had his headset on—he sang softly while he worked.”
After being a supporting player for many musicians as the side hustle to his day job, John finally got a big break after meeting Kanye West. West produced John’s first solo album, Get Lifted, which went on to win three Grammy Awards, including Best New Artist.
John Stephens, the quiet, smart management consultant who loved to sing, changed his name to John Legend at the suggestion of his friend, poet J. Ivy, and with nine Grammys to his name, became an international superstar.
Jane Park admits she had no idea of the star potential of her former coworker. Convinced that he was destined for a quiet career as an analyst, she doubted his ability to interact with customers. Describing her thoughts at the time, she said, “He’ll never make it in client services. I thought, ‘He doesn’t have much of a personality.’ Now, when I watch him emerge out of a cloud of dry ice, bursting with . . . personality, I eat my words.”
After achieving fame and fortune, John Legend’s commitment to education reform and social justice increased. With his public profile and abundant resources, he:
- founded the nonprofit Show Me Campaign to fight poverty and address the issue of education reform in the United States.
- hosted the PBS special TED series on education.
- appears in the press to talk about the importance of education reform, often in partnership with peers like the Harlem Village Academies, where he is a board member.
- uses his social media platform to interact with his fans and to support his political and social causes.
So why did the gifted John Stephens give up a safe and secure business career to pursue an uncertain music career as John Legend?
When he got famous and rich, why didn’t John Legend leave behind the passion John Stephens had for education and social justice?
I think it is because he has a definition of success that incorporates his roots, leverages all of his ingredients, and builds a body of work that his fans and parents can be proud of.
You do not have to become an international superstar to have a rich and meaningful life. You do not have to give up a rich and meaningful life to become an international superstar.
Get clear on your definition of success and how you can use it to grow your body of work.
Success in the new world of work
How do you define true success?
This question has plagued academics, artists, parents, teachers, and businesspeople for centuries. It has spawned hundreds of motivational posters and thousands of quotes. I have rarely met a person in my life who does not want to feel successful.
Personally, I define success as enjoying my life while I am living it. Which means living in accordance with my values, doing work that matters, being available to my loved ones, and staying focused and mindful in the present, instead of wishing for success in the future.
But success is different for everyone. What does success mean to you? How do we know if we have reached the pinnacle of success? And how do you shape a body of work that leads to a successful outcome?
I was scanning my news feed one morning and a headline jumped out from businessinsider.com: “The ‘Real Winners of the World’ Don’t Have Work-Life Balance, They Have Work.”
In the article, career coach Marty Nemko said: “The real winners of the world, the people that are the most productive, think that this notion of work-life balance is grossly overrated. Most of the highly successful and not-burned-out people I know work single-mindendly towards a goal they think is important, whether it’s developing a new piece of software, inventing something, or a cardiologist who’s seeing patients on nights and weekends instead of playing Monopoly with his kids on the weekend.”
I felt the heat rise in my face as I saw the term “real winner” equated with someone who avoids playing with his kids so he can concentrate on work.
I judged him. Hard. “Why in the world would you even have kids, if you are just going to ignore them?”
And then I realized, in a more calm moment, that my view of parenting may not be any more “right” than said cardiologist because everyone has a very different take on what it means to be a good (successful) parent.
I was actually more bothered by the idea that there are “real winners” of the world and that one definition of success can be viewed as better than another, while ignoring the real tradeoffs of choosing one path over another.
How do you lean into success?
In her bestselling book Lean In, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg argues that women have been sabotaging their own success for years by building internal barriers that limit upward mobility in their careers. Many people misinterpreted her premise as saying that all women must push higher up the career ladder.
In fact, she says, “I do not believe that there is one definition of success and happiness. Not all women want careers. Not all women want children. Not all women want both. I would never advocate that we should all have the same objectives. Many people are not interested in acquiring power, not because they lack ambition, but because they are living their lives as they desire.”
In the years I have worked on helping people leave their cubicles to start their own businesses, I saw reverse snobbism against people who chose to remain employees in large companies.
“You are not really free unless you work for yourself,” entrepreneurs would say.
Really? Say that to a terrified and exhausted entrepreneur, unsure if he can pay his mortgage next month but too embarrassed to get a job, lest his friends think he is a loser for giving up too soon.
“You are only a cog in a machine if you work for someone else.”
But what if you have the opportunity to work for dynamic people, creating great things, in an organization that provides a competitive salary, full health benefits, retirement savings, and three weeks paid vacation that you can use to travel the world or spend time with those you love?
Common career advice
There is a lot of career advice that people feel very strongly about.
- If you have a traditional career, you must climb the ladder.
- If you are a strong individual contributor, you must become a manager.
- If you are a successful entrepreneur, you must scale your business.
- If you make a lot of money, you should make even more money.
- If you achieve fame and success, you should push for a bigger stage.
There are common beliefs that keep people feeling trapped, defensive, or guilty about their choices
- If you are a woman or minority and are successful, it is because you were given breaks, not because of the quality of the work that you do.
- If you are from the majority and are successful, it is because you were given unfair advantages.
- If you have a well-paying job, you should be grateful for it and not risk stability to run a business. If you start your own business and find it doesn’t suit you, you should keep pressing forward because once you leave your job, it is too embarrassing to come back.
- If you have kids, you should not work all the time, so you can be a better parent.
- If you are a parent, you should demonstrate high standards and excellence to your kids by achieving career success.
What definition of success do you believe?
I recently sat on a plane next to a gentleman who had come to the United States from India in 1984. He told me, with a very heavy heart, how his son was in college and “spent his weekends with his peers working on ideas for online businesses.”
“He is throwing away his education,” he said. “Why doesn’t he focus all his attention and energy on his career and become the best engineer he can be? That is what is wrong with this country now; we are losing our competitive edge.”
I listened to him very patiently for more than an hour. I was too chicken to tell him that I was the author of Escape from Cubicle Nation and was working on a new book about how putting all your aspirations in a single career path was a risky career choice in the new world of work. I imagined how challenging the dynamic was between father and son when it came to career discussions.
And yet, listening to the passion in the father’s voice when he talked about his views on work made me think that he and his son had more in common than they might believe. “I love math,” he said. “And I am helping some of the employees at my neighborhood Starbucks with their math homework.”
While he did not agree with his son’s approach to education, he did take pride in his craft and was truly concerned about excellence. I like to think that if I had been on a longer flight, I might have been able to change his mind.
When I told this story to some of my Indian friends, they laughed at my naïveté. Some family and cultural definitions of success are not open to discussion and debate, nor likely to change. For many people, pleasing their parents is a strong and significant part of their specific success criteria.
If there is no agreement on societal standards of success, if you choose not to be swayed by biases, and if your parents have opinions about career that you do not agree with, how do you know what true success is?
You must create your own definition.
Body of Work Success Framework
Your Body of Work Success Framework draws from everything we have talked about so far.
Your roots
What is deeply important to you, inherently interesting, and intrinsically motivating?
Who do you want to impact and why?
(Remember Amanda Wang’s determination to succeed in chapter 2, fueled by her commitment to ease suffering of BPD patients and their families.)
Your ingredients
Which projects utilize a compelling mix of your ingredients, leverage your strengths, and continually allow you to learn, grow, and develop?
(Remember David Batstone’s unique combination of ingredients in chapter 3, which helped him successfully found an antislavery organization.)
Your handling of fear and doubt
What have you learned about yourself that will help if you get scared or feel pressure? How can you work with fear effectively so that you are still able to create and contribute to your body of work? (Remember Rafe Eric Biggs from chapter 7 and his ability to remain positive and productive through a devastating injury.)
Your work mode
Are you working as an employee, self-funded activist, academic, freelancer, or entrepreneur or multipotentialite?
Which standards of success do you want to measure? (Job performance rating, impact on your audience, number of projects completed, annual sales, or enthusiasm for rate of personal and professional growth)
(Remember Emilie Wapnick from chapter 4 and her passion for having multiple work modes and projects.)
Your creation
What are you creating now (e.g., a product, a degree, a book, an album, a movement)? What does completion look like? What standard are you using to measure the quality of the creation? (Number of units sold, grade point average, awards, number of comments or followers)
(Remember Mike Carson’s passion for video and stage production in chapter 5, and the importance of creating work that will get you noticed, on his path to success.)
Your quality of life
How much money do you need to cover your financial needs? Are you a minimalist who is happy with few material objects? Or are you a maximist who is only happy with lots of material objects?
How much additional money do you want to invest in your own pleasure pursuits, the growth of your business, or the service of others?
How much money do you want to have in reserve for uncertain financial times, job loss, business, or retirement?
Your relationships and collaborations
What kind of friend, spouse, parent, and community member do you want to be?
Who do you need to have around you to ensure that you do your best thinking and complete projects that are important to you?
How much time do you want to invest in your relationships?
How many relationships can you sustain and still have time to rest, recover and create?
(Remember Kyle Durand from chapter 7 and his team of collaborators who helped him finally complete his software project.)
Your emotional and physical well-being
How do you want to feel when you wake up in the morning?
Where do you derive true emotional well-being and satisfaction?
Which conditions will drive optimal physical and emotional health?
After you’ve completed this exercise, you may find that your expectations in each of the categories are in direct conflict with each other.
That’s perfectly normal.
If certain areas compete, which is a priority right now? Which sacrifices are you willing to make to serve your priorities?
- meet my financial goals?
- use my strengths to create products I am proud of?
- enjoy the work while I am doing it?
- construct the life I want to live?
- serve people I care about and add value to the market?
Success dysmorphia
You may think that if you take the time to complete your Body of Work Success Framework, you will be perfectly content and satisfied when you reach your goals.
But if you are anything like me, you may temporarily forget your own success metrics and covet someone else’s results.
When bestselling author Brené Brown was featured in two successive episodes of Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday, you could feel the collective pangs of jealousy from authors everywhere, knowing the power Oprah has to move books.
After discussing Daring Greatly, Oprah looked at her and said with love, “You are my soul mate!”
While I would love for Oprah to call me her soul mate, what is important to remember is that Brené:
- spent years of her life doing unglamorous academic research.
- bared her soul and deepest insecurities to an audience of millions with her TED talk.
- wrote a fantastic, funny, carefully researched, and extremely accessible book on a topic relevant to a huge target audience.
- invested in her platform and speaking career in a way that she was prepared to deliver a truly riveting two-hour conversation with one of the best interviewers in the world.
Success dysmorphia is viewing your success through someone else’s results and finding yourself feeling awkward, ugly, less than, and not quite on par with their accomplishments.
When you view your success through someone else’s mirror
- There is always something bigger. Oprah was not content with a massively successful television show, she needed a network.
- You can always make more money. Carlos Slim, the world’s richest man and hopefully a distant relative, always wants to increase his wealth.
- There is always someone with a hotter body. Demi Moore spent years obsessing over her rock-hard, shapely figure.
- There is always someone who sells more books. Not content with creating a movement with The 4-Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss smashed sales with his follow-up books The 4-Hour Body and The 4-Hour Chef.
- There is always someone who is a more productive parent. My client, lawyer Rachel Rodgers, was on bed rest for the last third of her pregnancy but still managed to care for her daughter, garner national press, serve her clients, and write a book just days before giving birth.
It’s time for a new mirror
Measure your success using your own success framework.
Celebrate your accomplishments, even if they are different than your peers.
And own your choices. Respect your peers, and yourself, by saying, “I know I missed my daughter’s dance recital, but I aced my client meeting and got the new account, which means that we will be able to go to Hawaii for vacation this year, just like I discussed with her.”
Or “I sold 25,000 books to my friend’s 250,000, but I was able to spend only half my time working and the other half of my time traveling the world.”
Or “I am still twenty pounds heavier than my best friend, who looks amazing since she started training CrossFit five nights a week. But I have found a way to walk twenty minutes a day, even while working a full-time job and going to school at night. When I finish school and have more time to work out, I look forward to getting my washboard abs back.”
Take pride in your accomplishments and notice how they become a source of pride in your body of work.
Your definition of success
I had a very interesting coaching conversation with a bright young woman. We were talking about her desire to expand her business and play bigger in the world.
When I asked what would happen if she started to put herself out in the world in a bigger way by offering more programs and connecting with more people, she got kind of quiet. I asked her what it would mean to her life if she grew her business. This is what she said:
“I would have to be out there with people all the time and wouldn’t be able to spend days at home reenergizing.” (She is an introvert according to the Myers Briggs test, which means she needs time alone to recharge her battery)
“I would ramp up my business, then if I decided to have kids, it would be hard to give that up so I could focus on being a mom.
“I would have to have all the answers and I am not sure I do.”
I listened to her, and realized that she had very strong ideas about what it meant to be a leader. And I wasn’t sure that this definition of leadership was one she wanted for herself; it was the model that she saw practiced by people she viewed as “successful.”
So our homework assignment was to come up with a definition of leadership that only applied to her life and situation. It was OK if she wanted to be known as a leader who worked one day a month. It was also OK if she wanted to lead by having the freedom to change her mind frequently.
Your definition of success will drive who you serve and what you create, but, most important, how you feel while you are creating it.
I define success as enjoying my life while I am leading it. And I demonstrate leadership of my own life by:
- working only on projects that energize me and are connected with the body of work I want to create.
- contributing something useful to the global discussion of what work means in the twenty-first century.
- serving my roots by highlighting and supporting talented people from diverse backgrounds who are often overlooked by mainstream business and media.
- not working more than my body can handle.
- actively looking for fun and joy in work.
- taking joy and pride in being a parent and wife and being available to my kids and husband when they need me.
- being open to feedback and coaching in areas of weakness and fear.
- representing myself in a way that makes my mother, grandmother, and daughter proud.
- holding love and compassion in the highest priority.
Do I do all of these every day? Rarely. But this vision of leadership feels right to me. I am sure your list will be very different, but I hope it feels right to you.
So what does success mean to you?
I asked a group of my blog readers and clients to share their definitions of success. Here are some of their replies:
Glenda Watson Hyatt, a Canadian writer, consultant, and motivational speaker, was born with cerebral palsy due to lack of oxygen at birth. She has limited physical mobility and some significant speech impediments, but with a will of steel and supportive parents, she has learned to work within her physical parameters. Beyond writing her book with only her left thumb and giving speeches through speech translation software, Glenda views success this way:
“To me, success means working with my limitations or finding ways around them to lead a happy and fulfilled life. This means finding a balance between appreciating and being grateful for what I do have in that moment while still trying to improve my situation. Oftentimes it means getting creative to get something done or to increase my potential. For example, even though I have created a way to deliver a presentation to an audience, which in itself is amazing, and I am truly grateful to have that ability added to my repertoire, I will continue striving for a more graceful technical solution to deliver my message. For me that would be success.”
Freelance writer and sometime stand-up comic Benjamin Gran defines success as:
“Freedom. Lots and lots of time with my wife and kids. Not having to take crap from anyone. Not having to do stupid corporate busywork. Getting paid to express myself creatively.”
Casey Barber, a food writer, says:
“Other than being able to pay the mortgage without waking up in night sweats? I’d say it’s being able to proudly tell someone what you do at a cocktail party rather than feeling like you’re boring them or waving it off as something you’re almost ashamed of. Awards are great, but it’s the sustained feeling of accomplishment that makes it possible to get through the day-to-day.”
Chris Horner, a branch manager for a Community Bank, defines success as:
“Having time, resources, and energy to do what I want to do once obligations are done. Raising a responsible, appreciative family. A Ferrari would be nice too but is not mandatory.”
Software developer Mike Tefft says:
“I would measure success as doing something you’re passionate about while making sure that you can live the life you want. By that, I mean that you have time for family, friends, . . . life. You’re not spending continual long hours of work at the expense of family and friends. You have enough money to support yourself with a little left over for some fun. And I think a little external recognition would probably help validate it. Many of us can’t believe that we’re actually good at something and a little external recognition from someone outside of your circle of family and friends tells you you’re doing something right.”
Nader Mahtabfar is a licensed dispensing optician who defines success as:
“Being able to overcome issues and challenges in an effort to do something remarkable so that many people can benefit.”
Shari Risoff is a consultant to small businesses. Her definition of success:
“Pleasing God in my choices. Using the talents I have to provide solutions and help people.”
Scott Barr is a finance manager for a local real estate company. He defines success as:
“On a more spiritual level, it would be happiness; on a more competitive level, it would be doing better than others in whatever category I’m being measured in (either by peers, mentally, by family). So if I have a better car, a better position at the local company, kids who are doing better, et cetera, then I’m succeeding—at least more than everyone else!”
Natalie Currie is a consultant and coach from Canada, with a passion for sustainability. Her definition of success reflects her maven nature:
“Paulo Coelho said it best: ‘It is being able to go to bed each night with your soul at peace.’”
While there are some common themes in these definitions of success, it’s obvious that a unique set of values has led to the creation of each one. Competition and challenge is motivating to one person, while personal freedom is important to another. Some need to feel passion for the work itself, while others value the time, resources, and opportunities they get from completing a job.
There is no right answer. There is only the answer that deeply resonates with you.
A personal reflection on success
Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions. . . . Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the “Beloved.” Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence.
—Henri J.M. Nouwen
In 2010, I was invited to do a guest post for my friend Hugh MacLeod, who is an artist and author. He was running a blog series called “Remember Who You Are.” As I thought about the topic, it occurred to me that remembering the grace of who you are in your most innocent state, outside of any personal or professional situation, is the most pure form of success.
So I wrote a very personal piece about my parents’ divorce, before my dad moved to Port Costa. Although the piece is about my own journey back to myself, I also see it as the journey of both of my parents, who moved through the pain of divorce to build strong and wonderful new marriages. Success and happiness does not mean that we do not have periods of intense pain and angst. Perhaps those times remind us who we really are. And what could be more successful than that?