Practical Magic | How to Define Success For Yourself
How much have the past 18 months changed you? Does 'success' mean something different for you now? Let me take you through a tool for how to cast a new vision for your life.
What Happens When Your Definition of Success Changes?
Do any of the following apply to you?
Are you feeling demotivated and unfocused?
Are you procrastinating from taking action?
Do you feel listless?
Are you lacking confidence?
Are you unsure how to move forward?
Are you unsure if you have what it takes to do the things that you're trying to do right now?
Are you feeling foggy or destabilized?
If so, know that you’re far from alone. After the last 18 months we’ve all had, it's highly normal that we’ve had our inner campuses shaken and are struggling to find our North Star again.
If you're feeling demotivated, maybe the goals and responsibilities you've contributed to over the past 18 months of this pandemic are not inspiring or relevant to you anymore. You've changed.
If you’re procrastinating from taking action, consider that your personal values have changed and there's a wise and true part of you trying to be heard because it knows a better way forward.
If you're lacking confidence, perhaps it's not you who's unconfident, but rather that you can no longer trust the systems you've been subscribing to. The trust is missing.
If your definition of success, along with what you want and what you care about, has not profoundly changed over the last 18 months that would be highly unusual. In many countries, something called the Great Resignation is happening right now. Millions of people are resigning from their jobs or downscaling or closing their businesses because they’ve reexamined their lives, their work, who they are, and what their life is for. After tremendous loss, disappointment, and change comes a process of grieving and reckoning with reality. After the process of grieving and reckoning with reality, naturally follows an urge to adapt and take action. This is exactly what is happening in our world right now; people are starting to quit, change, and pivot. This is happening on a scale almost never before seen in human history. It's extraordinary.
This process can happen outside of a pandemic or life-changing event. We are cyclical beings; we move in seasons, cycles, and spirals. We will have transitional moments and moments when an energetic cycle is ending and it's time to begin again. Sometimes this process really creeps up on us. Sometimes we're not aware how much we've changed until all of a sudden one day we realize how unhappy we are. Sometimes we feel this tug that we’ve learned everything we’re going to learn here it's time to move on. Sometimes we’re very comfortable and have everything we thought we wanted and yet there’s a voice inside of us saying, there's something else out there.
This is a natural and normal part of the human experience; it’s what keeps human society progressing, evolving, and creating new life. This is why I teach how to be guided by your vision and personal definition of success. This way, you actively define your North Star and move towards it so that every time you arrive at the end of one of these cycles, you already have the tools for how to pivot and move forward without becoming stuck and stagnated.
Interrogating the Word ‘Success’
In this episode, I want to share a loose framework that is at the heart of everything I teach and how I kick off working with all of my coaching clients. It's a framework to define your own definition of success.
Perhaps this is something you want to do right now because you, like millions of others, are feeling ready for a change. You’ve changed your values, what you want, and are meeting a new version of yourself.
This practical magic tool is called Vision of Success and will help you define and locate a new North Star.
I want to start by interrogating this word ‘success’ because I know for some people ‘success’ is a bit triggering or is simply very murky. What does it really mean?
This is the definition from the English Collins dictionary. My edition success has three different meanings.
Success is the achievement of something that you have been trying to do.
Success is the achievement of a high position in a particular field, for example, in business, or politics.
Someone or something that is a success, achieves a high position makes a lot of money, or is admired a great deal.
How many of you automatically feel like definitions 2 and 3 resonate with you more?
This is because these are the definitions that we’re fed from a very early age. Success is about making money, achieving a high position in a particular field, being busy, or being admired. This is a narrow definition. We hardly get to engage with definition 1, which is something you have been trying to do. Something you have been trying to do, regardless of what it is, regardless of who gets to decide whether that something is worthy or not.
This is the definition I work with, and this is a definition I encourage you to keep in mind too. Success as far as I see is nothing more or less than you deciding something that you want, and then going after it. That's it. No one gets to decide for you whether it's successful enough or worthy enough.
A Formula to Get Clear on Your Vision of Success
To get clear on a formula to dig down on the specifics of that something that you are trying to do, I break success down into three categories.
Lifestyle Design
Creative Freedom
Financial Stability
If we define success in a very narrow way, by saying it's just about work, or it's just about money, or it's just about creative achievements, we're limiting ourselves.
Let me break down what these categories mean.
Lifestyle Design
Lifestyle design is about arranging work around your lifestyle, not the other way around. Prioritizing what’s important to you: family, friendships, health, hobbies, and still delivering great work if you choose to have a career.
Creative Freedom
Creative freedom is about working as much as you want, when you want, with whom you want, and where you want. It's about getting to decide your zone of genius, how you want to contribute, and the parameters for how much of your life force you share with the world.
Financial Stability
Financial stability means having control over your time, workload, and income so that you can sustainably earn the money you want without working more than you want. You get to design it for yourself. Some people want to know they have income coming in every month. Other people feel freer with the freedom to earn lots of money in one go and then have months or even years where they don't know. It’s about deciding what feels best for you and designing your life based on your desires and needs.
Specificity Is the Key Ingredient
Whether it's in my online course, Vision of Success, which takes you through this whole process step by step with videos, exercises, and workbooks, or with my 1:1 coaching clients, we begin our work together by getting specific about what each of these buckets means to you.
Lifestyle Design
What is the day-to-day lifestyle I want to lead?
How many hours do I want to spend working?
What are the things I want to do?
Where do I want to live?
Who do I want to be close to?
Creative Freedom
What kind of work do I want to do?
What's going to help me be at my best?
What do I not want to do?
Financial Stability
What is my number for the lifestyle I want to lead?
This will give me insight into the kind of work, income, or business I need to create to deliver that stability.
The reason I define success with these three terms is that it's holistic. One thing that is really important to me and is a big part of the work I do in the world is teaching people how to have success without compromise, sacrifice, burnout, making sacrifices in their health, or relationships just to be admired or achieve a high position.
If you achieve a high position but at the detriment to your health, relationships, and well-being, that's not success. It's failure because it comes at such a high cost.
If you’re materially successful, but spiritually and morally bankrupt, I also consider that failure because you're spreading scarcity. You may have accumulated a lot of money, but you're spreading scarcity spiritually.
If you're greatly admired and famous, but are plagued with self-loathing, that's also failure because what's on the inside is not matched by what's on the outside and it's not making you happy.
Success is not success when it comes at a cost.
Call me idealistic. Call me naive. But I deeply believe that one can have success in this world that does not come at a cost. This is why I encourage everyone to define their own version of success under these three buckets in as much tangible, specific, grounded detail that you can rather than generalized vague concepts that don't mean anything to you on a bodily level.
The clearer you are on your definition of success, the easier it is for you to go and get it.
Success will feel different for every single person on this planet. There is no one definition of success. It’s not a destination but an ever-evolving journey. Once you understand this, you can start to practically design your life based on what you want right now. Not what you think you should do, not what everyone else wants for you, and not what you think our society values.
Success to me is being able to say in 1 year, 5 years, 10 years, 50 years: I designed this life based on my own desires. I didn't settle for it. I didn't sacrifice.
Write Your Own Definition of Success
If you feel stuck or listless, if your current life isn't delivering the goods for you, or if you're at the end of an energetic cycle and want to reconnect with your vision for your life today, I encourage you to do this exercise.
Grab a notebook and write your own definition of success by describing it in concrete, tangible details. What do lifestyle design, creative freedom, and financial stability mean for you? Try to be as specific and precise as you can. If you want more support my online course provides workbooks and videos that guide you through each step.
Lifestyle Design
What does success look like for you in terms of your health, wellness, family, and social life?
How do you spend holidays?
What are your hobbies?
Where do you spend your time?
How do you spend your time?
What are the boundaries you have around your time?
Creative Freedom
What does meaningful work look like to you?
What kind of people do you spend your time with at work?
How do they inspire you?
What kind of personal projects do you get to do?
What do you think about?
Do you get to switch off and step back to recharge?
Do you get to engage with your many selves outside of work?
Financial Stability
What are the numbers?
What do you need to deliver your ideal lifestyle and that leaves you with plenty to save for the future and give back if that’s something you want?
Think about your personal income goals.
Think about budgets for savings.
Think about investments.
Think about charitable giving.
Think about where else you might want to circulate your money in the economy.
When you find your ‘more than enough number’, whether it's higher or lower than you expected, emotions will come up, but make peace with that number. Understand that it isn't good or bad, it doesn't say anything about you, it just is. You can't help what you want. You don't choose your desires in this life. That number is simply information. It's your body telling you, this is what I want. If we can find a way to make this work, we're likely to be more satisfied.
Look for themes and weave together your definition of success.
Once you've done this exercise, start to weave together your answers. Look for themes and come up with a definition of what success means for you.
Check-in with your body:
How do I feel about this definition?
Is it the right size? Is it too small?
Have I been holding back?
Does it give me direction?
Does it light me up?
Do I feel nervous and scared, but also excited about the possibilities?
Your vision of success is not a map, it’s a compass.
This vision may take years to work towards; it may end up taking your whole lifetime. And maybe that's exactly how it's supposed to be. If you focus too much on the how from the get-go, you’ll limit yourself because you’ll imagine your vision from the standpoint of where you are today. The resources you have today, the energy you have today, and totally ignorant of the potential opportunities, relationships, resources, collaborations that could be possible for you if you start pursuing this vision.
If your vision seems big, crazy, outrageous, and unrealistic, you have done the exercise perfectly right. Your vision of success is there to energize and inspire you.
It's not about getting there as quickly as possible. Your vision is a compass, and nothing could be more important and useful in these times than having access to your own compass. There's so much uncertainty, instability, and it feels like we can't rely on anything. Your compass will keep you grounded and focused. Your vision of success will give you the confidence and power to know that you have a direction that feels true to you.
For More Support in Your Vision Casting
If you’re feeling frustrated, stagnant, bored, listless, demotivated, consider that it's time to cast a new vision for your life. If you want more support, emotions are coming up, or you need troubleshooting, you can find all of this in my online course, Vision of Success. Module 1 is creating the compass, and Module 2 gives you a map of how to work towards your vision.
If you feel it’s the right time to have 1:1 support, encouragement, and someone who has your back as you bring a brand new vision for success to life, book a free call with me to talk about coaching.
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