Blog Post #2: My Two Cents on…Success

Success means many things to many people, and each of us needs to define what success looks like to us. Not as a crutch or excuse for why we are not 'successful' but as the roadmap to where you want to be and how you plan to get there.

 Your success may not look like anyone else's version of success, and that's okay. We do ourselves a disservice when we let others define what personal success looks like for us. Or even worse, when we compare our success to someone else's, we risk seeing failure instead of success. We may even convince ourselves that we don't want to be successful simply because of how we see others and their success.

 Now, on the job, your supervisor, boss, or CEO might define what success looks like for the company and what your successful contributions look like. But that is the organization's success and how your contributions can be considered successful. Tying too much of your version of success to the success of others, even if they are signing the paycheck, can hamper your own success.

 If you are the CEO, success might be seen as the revenue you generate or the contribution the company makes to its industry or communities it serves. That is a success, but letting your business define your success can leave you feeling unsuccessful when the company has run its course.

 Today, it is easy to see the perceived success of others. We have the means and technologies to make ourselves look successful. And the same technologies let us give the world a glimpse of who we are and what we do. We let others see what we want them to see and portray this as success. When this happens, it becomes easy to compare our 'success' to their 'success,' leading us to fail to see our success. But what we don't see in others is the failures that came before success, or we simply see the illusion of success because we don't see the whole picture. And using this as our own gauge of success can hinder us from defining and obtaining our version of success.

 Success is about what you truly want from life, working towards goals, and finding success in completing those goals. Success is working hard and meeting goals; it's about knowing yourself and understanding your version of success. It's also about failure. We are bound to have failures on the road to success, and failure is just as critical as success. I believe that just as "necessity is the mother of invention," failure is the teacher that helps you learn about and understand success.

 Over time, we learn that success is about personal knowledge and growth. We also have to understand that what success looked like yesterday doesn't look like success today. As we grow, we gain new wisdom and insights that might change our version of success, but that's okay. Being in a state of stagnation means that your success will stagnate, but being in a state of growth means that your version of success will grow.

 For what it's worth, my two cents on success…Success is personal; it is about knowing yourself, setting and meeting goals, and determination in the face of failure. Because failure is not the opposite of success but part of gaining success.