Success Isn’t a Checklist
“How do you define success?" That was a question posed to a group of writers including myself yesterday. The speaker was asking us to determine what success meant with our writing journeys, specifically. I was proudly telling some of the other writers in the group that I challenge myself to publish 2 blog posts per week, just to put something out there, even if I don’t feel like each one is my best work. I don’t want to get so caught up in editing for perfection that I fail to post at all. I went home and started writing this post, fully intent on publishing it yesterday. In fact, I hit publish. I immediately realized I didn’t love what I had written, not just a few words or commas, but the overall narrative. So I took it down, and I’m publishing it today instead. I was so focused on meeting this arbitrary definition of success I had given myself that I was about to publicly share something I wasn’t proud of and that didn’t accurately capture my thoughts. Maybe it is time to rethink my definitions.
When initially asked about success in the group setting, I immediately thought about how crucial it is in business planning to outline what your definition of success for that enterprise looks like and what you would like your exit strategy to be. With writing, or any project we take on, it makes sense to determine from the outset our methods for measuring its success. But what about life? How do I identify what an accomplished life will look like? I know the ultimate exit will be death, but when I reach that milestone at some unforeseen time, will I be able to evaluate my life as a successful venture? What I wrote yesterday listed a few metrics that revolved around personal and professional achievements, but the more I thought about it, those didn’t feel like the right barometers for measuring a successful LIFE.
Many of us grew up in classrooms and on athletic fields where we were taught that the metrics for determining our success were based upon comparisons with our peers, like class rankings, scholarship offerings, and starting positions on a team or in a musical group. We graduated adolescence and as adults have continued striving for “success” sometimes without stopping to evaluate what that means for us personally. We have been comparing ourselves to our neighbors and colleagues in terms of material possessions, relationship statuses, and notoriety. Social media hasn’t helped. It feels as though there has been a societal reckoning, especially after the pandemic, that climbing to the top of the corporate ladder may not represent the pinnacle that we once thought we were supposed to summit. But have you thought about what it is you want to strive for instead?
I remember talking to my therapist about wanting to make others around me feel uplifted and cared for. I wanted to put others’ needs ahead of my own, because that was the role that was modeled for me by my mom. That’s how I would define a successful life on my deathbed. My therapist pointed out that I am not my mom. My reasons for aspiring to be “that person” to others were probably not in alignment with my innate personality, abilities, or calling. I do want to help others feel seen, but not at the expense of my own self-fulfillment.
When my dad died so suddenly, there was an immense sense of loss for our entire family. My mom’s grief was all encompassing. I know that a big part of her grief was over the physical loss of my dad and their relationship. They had been married almost 33 years at the time of his death. She would tell anyone he was her best friend, and to lose him in a way that felt like he had kept a huge secret from her (planning his own death) was too much to bear.
I truly feel that the onset of her dementia was triggered/exacerbated/discovered because not only had she lost my dad, her life partner, but she had lost the sense of who she was. She had identified herself as a caregiver her entire life. You can read about the many ways she exemplified this role here. With my dad’s death, my mom no longer had her parents, her in-laws, her children (by then adults), or her spouse to take care of. She was no longer serving in a teaching role, but an administrative one as the Vice Principal of an elementary school. The last person who “needed” her was gone. She had defined success as the level to which she could take care of others. When there was no one left relying on her care, her self worth and identity were as lost as those people who had grown up or passed away.
After witnessing my mom’s heartbreak and hearing from others who have lost a large sense of self due to circumstantial changes in their own lives or in the life of the businesses for which they worked, I am not sure how I want to define success for my life, but I am recognizing the need to do so. It is so tempting to create a list of to dos which I can check off, but I think it is more ambiguous than that. I think it needs to be something a little more amorphous to allow flexibility in times of loss, to not be so tethered to a role we play.
