Do you scroll through LinkedIn, looking at others’ achievements and wondering if your own career is keeping up?
Do you look at Facebook, Instagram or TikTok and wonder how your life measures up? If your car, home and other possessions are “good enough”?
Let me be the one to tell you that you’re fine just the way you are and where you are in life.
I’ve long believed that our ideas about what constitutes success are misplaced. We tend to focus too much on external markers such as money, power, and prestige, rather than internal ones like happiness, fulfillment, and purpose. This approach leads to a sense of emptiness and dissatisfaction, even if we achieve all our external goals.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that the pursuit of money is bad. Just that the pursuit is bad if it’s to the detriment of personal growth and having healthy relationships with family and friends.
We admire business leaders and point to them as the standard we all should aim for, but plenty of successful people are miserable despite their financial success, while many “everyday people” quietly live lives of fulfillment and happiness.
We need to recognize that success is a very personal and subjective concept. What represents success for one person may not be the same for another. We should strive to define success for ourselves and not let societal (or family/parental) expectations dictate what success looks like for each of us. (To the parents out there reading this, what works for you might not work for your kids, got it?)
A more meaningful and fulfilling way to think about success is to focus on internal markers such as happiness, fulfillment, and purpose. These are more likely to lead to a sense of satisfaction and contentment in life. Again, I’m not against the pursuit of money, only against the pursuit of money that comes at the expense of internal gratification.
Ultimately, success is not about achieving external markers, but about living a life that aligns with our values and brings us a sense of fulfillment. By redefining what success means to us, we can create a more meaningful and satisfying life.
How do YOU define success? Tell me below 👇. Not sure what you want from your career and life, let’s chat about it: linktr.ee/burn.the.boat
(The pic is me being fulfilled by travel, in Gibraltar, with a Barbary macaque on my head!)
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