What does it mean to be successful? How can I create my own definition of success and see it through?
We all intuitively know—and have been told—that we cannot judge our success against others. And yet we do it all the time!
Sometimes, we start scrolling through Instagram or Linkedin, and it can seem like everyone is doing "it"—everyone but you.
It’s difficult not to pit your achievements against your friends, your family memebers, your significant others, your coworkers, and—let’s face it—everyone. When it comes to setting goals and achieving them, it can feel like you're always behind schedule.
Social media makes it that much more difficult. We know "the socials" act as the highlight reels. And yet, we fall victim to it every time.
- Wow, she is so put together.
- Yikes, she got that promotion so fast.
- Hmm, she really does seem to “have it all,” doesn’t she?
Forget what you’re seeing on Instagram stories. Turn off your LinkedIn notifications. Beyond every achievement, there is usually a ton of work, blood, sweat, and tears that you're not seeing.
Table of Contents: The 6 Steps
- First Things First: What’s Actually Important to You?
- Make a Plan for Achieving Your Goals in Line With Your Priorities
- Allow Space for Change
- Document Your Personal Success
- Make Your Mental and Physical Health a Priority
- Maintain a Growth Mindset
We’re using this article to ask you to do this crucial thing for your own career—build and achieve success with your own framework.
1. First Things First: What’s Actually Important to You?
The obvious question is this: What does success look like to you? Before you can even begin to answer that question, you need to evaluate what is important to you. If you neglect to do this, you’ll constantly compare yourself to others on matters you don’t even care about.
For example, I drive a Honda Fit. I love that little car. I don’t look at Teslas or Maseratis and think, “Wow, I am not as accomplished as that driver.”
Why? It’s a huge privilege to have a car that can safely transport me and my family from place to place. Besides that, I don’t care about cars, so why would I compare my little car to someone’s luxury vehicle? There’s nothing wrong with being a car enthusiast, it’s just not one way I personally evaluate my own success.
Disqualify what doesn't matter to you—or your version of success. Even if it matters to your friend, your parent, or even your partner.
Now, let’s qualify what’s really important to you. Try out the following six parameters to start. On a scale from 1-10, how important is each of these in your personal picture of success?
- My Health (Mental + Physical)
- Work+Life Balance
- Money
- Making a Difference
- Remaining True to Yourself
- Personal Growth
Once you've prioritized what's actually important to you (and once you've discarded what definitely is not), create sub-categories for building out your picture of success.
If you prioritized personal growth and physical health, your success might look like achieving a goal like running a 10k or reading two books every month. If your priorities are in work + life balance, your success might be in having a job that can be flexible to your home life. Success might look like having a career that allows you to travel every year.
If you prioritized a certain dollar amount, success might look like earning a certain salary, creating retirement savings, and putting a down payment on a condominium.
2. Make a Plan for Achieving Your Goals in Line With Your Priorities
Once you have identified your priorities—and trashed the ideas of what does not qualify as success for you—it’s time to create some goals.
When creating goals, I like to create mini- and macro-goals. The mini-goals help you to enact a breadcrumb approach to your big goal by laying them out, one by one. Mini goals also help you to achieve progress and maintain motivation. It can be quite difficult to achieve a massive goal—mini-goals help you to chip away at it while experiencing real progress.
Try this out. For every giant goal, create four or five mini-goals.
Here’s an example. Suppose you want a job at a giant corporation—we’ll call it Gooloo. So, you’re dreaming of landing that gig at Gooloo, but there’s only a few things in your way. You don’t quite have the experience, you don’t know anyone who works there, and you aren’t seeing the right job opening for you—yet. Let’s set some mini-goals to get that job.
- Mini-Goal #1: Overhaul your resume and LinkedIn profile to match Gooloo’s company mission and the job you’re looking to acquire. You likely do have some of the experience needed.
- Mini-Goal #2: If you need new experience or skills, consider enrolling in an online course to develop those. Add those to your new + improved resume.
- Mini-Goal #3: Informational interviews. Find some people who currently work at Gooloo—maybe even someone who has held a position you’d love to interview for. Reach out to these people for informational interviews.
- Mini-Goal #4: If the job you want isn’t open, create your own job description. Research this job at other companies and make sure you’re constantly building the skill sets you will need for this job. In this process, you might even find this job at another equally-great corporation—and that’s awesome, too. Which brings us to our next point...
3. Allow Space for Change
I'm going to say this once, so pay attention.
It's not a failure if success looks different than you’d imagined. In fact, many people achieve their exact goal only to find out it's completely unfulfilling. To avoid that "now what?" moment, be open and flexible to change.
Instead of working to achieve one specific goal, be flexible to your vision of success—and the route you take to get there. As you progress through your life and your career, your criteria for happiness, fulfillment, and perceived success will change. Pay attention to how your priorities and values shift.
Move the goal post accordingly.
4. Document Your Personal Success
I’m big on documentation. I can’t tell you how important it is to lean into your victories when they happen.
Mistakes stick around—and when we let them do that, they become so much more impactful than our successes.
So yeah, I’m here to tell you to document your wins, your obstacles, your creativity, and your ideas on a weekly basis. It can be as simple as a five-minute exercise at the end of your week. Try out these questions to start:
- What steps did I take to work towards [THE GOAL] this week?
- What worked? What didn’t work?
- What step will I take next week towards [THE GOAL]?
- Is anything that doesn’t serve me getting in the way of [THE GOAL] and if so, how can I leave that behind next week?
- Is anything helping me to propel forward? How can I keep that momentum in the coming week?
5. Make Your Mental and Physical Health a Priority
When driving towards a vision of success, we can become a little too tunnel-visioned and lose focus of what really matters.
The most successful people have attributed being health conscious as one of the keys to being successful in life. Keep your mental and physical health in mind to protect yourself from burnout and other mental setbacks.
Don't fall into bad habits like missing sleep, over-stressing, or skipping meals. The long-term effects that prioritizing short-term goals can have are simply not worth jeopardizing your health.
Even if you're working towards a huge goal, make sure your lifestyle contains space for good habits—like going to the gym, eating healthy, and spending time with your family or other loved ones.
Remember that no accomplishment is worth ignoring your basic self-care.
6. Maintain a Growth Mindset
A growth mindset describes a willingness to learn new things and to leave your comfort zone.
Employees with growth mindsets believe in continuously evolving, adapting, and expanding their skills to reach new heights. Instead of seeing challenges in a negative light, employees with growth mindsets see opportunities for growth and learning.
Ways to Cultivate a Growth Mindset:
- Learn new skills.
- Use roadblocks and challenges as learning opportunities.
- Focus on today instead of always looking toward tomorrow.
- Say yes to unexpected adventures or new challenges.
- Allow your vision of a "successful life" to change over time.
Use a growth mindset to empower continuous learning and development. This is a great way to explore unexpected options instead of becoming laser-focused on a goal that might not make sense for you anymore.
Remember, there is no right way to be successful. We're inundated with pictures of success—the perfect home, the greatest love relationships, the perfect body, and oh my goodness, the list goes on, and it’s an aggressive feed.
Try to stay on track with what is important to you. When you feel yourself bogged down by the pictures of success around you, try out this mantra:
“Is this important to my own success?”
If it’s not, move on. Go after your own picture of success—whatever it may look like.
