How do you Define Success?

By Cecilia Sepp, CAE, CNAP, VEIP

The pandemic lockdown of 2020 provided a pause for most of the world. We had the opportunity to think, contemplate, and practice introspection. It’s amazing how a situation like the lockdown exposes what is actually important and what has no real value.

This type of observation informs our definitions in our life and the principles we all live by (yes, you live by your own principles even if you haven’t taken the time to articulate them). In order to learn, we need to ask questions. Which brings me to the topic of this article: how do you define success?

Some people have a low expectation of success. One of my favorite jokes is by comedian Roseanne Barr from her stand up days: “If those kids are alive at the end of the day, then I’ve done my job.” A tiger Mom she was not.

Others push hard for success and may even push the others around them, like their children. Another mother, unlike Roseanne Barr, might define success at the end of the day as a child learning to play a Mozart piece without the sheet music. That would be pretty impressive!

So many of us with careers define our professional success by what I now consider the wrong metrics. We look at titles, salaries, upward movement and take the attitude that bigger must be better. We chase brass rings and distractions that supposedly mark us as successful.

Maybe all these things we are chasing and using to measure ourselves are just plain wrong.

Is your worth really defined by your income? Are you a better person because you have a C-Suite title? Is your performance better than someone else’s simply because you work at a larger organization? Should you be seen as an example just because you served on a Board?

When push comes to shove, are you a person that others turn to in a crisis? Are you a person that people think of when they need help? Do you model compassion and understanding? Are you a person that stays calm while all those around you lose their heads?

In the 1980s there was a popular saying: Whoever dies with the most toys wins.

But you don’t win. Because you’re dead. And unlike the Egyptians, you can’t take it with you.

I learned the very hard way that chasing these titles and salaries and metrics makes very little difference in your life. It makes you care about the wrong things and takes focus away from becoming a better person.

In the end, it’s not how much you have that defines your worth. It is what kind of person you become. One of my favorite quotes for meditation and introspection is from the “Tao Te Ching” [loosely translated into English as The Way of Virtue] by Lao Tzu: “To conquer others is to have power. To conquer yourself is to have strength.”