Defining Success For Yourself (Part II)
Last week, I wrote a post about finding your own measure of success (You can read it here) I think it struck a chord, because a handful of people reached out to me to tell me that it resonated and then followed up with a series of questions. Because of the sentiment, I wanted to take a few of the questions and try to provide some additional color and thoughts.
Q: Was there something specific that motivated you to write about this?
As I said, I’ve had a lot of these conversations previously with friends and colleagues. I think a lot of it is a byproduct of being a millennial raised in a middle class suburb that prioritized education, success, financial security, and a good/prestigious career. Growing up, I constantly heard messaging from my parents, teachers, and culture around these things, and when you hear them constantly, at some point you just internalize them into your decision making process. Fast forward 15 years, and you get to a point where you realize that these messages have made a transformational impact on your life, but they also have brought on some challenges too.
One of the harder (but also, meaningful) aspects of growing up and becoming an adult is deeply assessing some of the core beliefs you had and figuring out what makes sense to keep and what makes sense get rid of. This is especially difficult because I truly believe I’ve had wonderful parents, role models, teachers, and mentors, who taught me so many great things that without them, I wouldn’t be where I am. But nobody is perfect, and quite frankly, the times have changed, so it’s only natural that some of the messages we were raised with no longer apply to us.
Q: Can you give an example of a deep win?
Love this question. For me, a deep win comes when you fall in love with the process and eagerly roll up your sleeves to do the work, even if there are setbacks and challenges. Over the past year, I’ve had to learn how to sell myself, and specifically my ideas, and have started to really fall in love with the entire sales and business development process.
Yes, sometimes I face rejection, but I love the process of preparing for a meeting, figuring out how I want to position myself, handling their questions (and objections) and suggesting proposals and ideas of how I can work together with them to win business. And certainly, I feel a sense of pride and satisfaction when I get a new client.
Another deep win for me is when I get to work on my podcast. While I’ve gained some modicum of success, it's definitely not anywhere close to being on the top of the I-Tunes charts. Furthermore, there are a lot of nitty gritty details to putting out 1-2 podcasts each week, which I have truly enjoyed doing for the past 16 months. For me, I get a sense of joy and satisfaction for being able to create and bring ideas to life in ways that help others, regardless of that’s 1 or 1000 people.
Q: How do you stop from over indexing to achievements? It seems a bit like human nature for all of us?
It absolutely is! Humans are wired for social connection and for fitting in, which makes striving or wanting something that others perceive is valuable or positive such an attractive route. I’d also argue that in many respects this is what keeps some of us out of trouble. I think there are two things that if you can watch out for, can keep you from focusing too much on achievements.
First, if you’re going to work toward something, making sure you have a clear “why” for why you are pursuing that specific goal or outcome. If you’ve taken the time to name it and identify it, I think you’ll catch yourself as you’ll be clearly articulating your purpose for pursuing it.
Second, is identifying if you’rerunning away from something, or if you are running towards something. Running away from something generally means that you're pursuing something out of a fear. You’ll want to go deeper by getting to the root of what that fear is, because ultimately, that is what the goal is about, more than the goal itself. If you can sanity check against those two mental models, I think that can help you make healthier and more informed decisions
Q: What do you need to do to find your deep wins?
One thing that helped me was a story that one of my mentors and former managers told me when I was an intern back in business school. He told me the importance of defining winning and success. Winning is a fixed game. You either win or you lose, there is a clear outcome. There can only be one winner.
Winning comes at the expense of another; in order for one to win, another must lose. Succeeding is different... Everyone has the potential to succeed. Success comes from within, because you’ve defined a goal and achieved it, or built a strategy and executed against it. To be sure, winning is still helpful toward achieving success, but winning deep like Dr. Pippa Grange requires you to define success for yourself.
Q: Are extrinsic motivations bad?
No, I don’t think so! Sometimes they are needed, especially when we are unsure of a new environment or the context around you. I call this being able to understand “what good looks like.” For example, let's say you are new to a company, and part of the company values is gratitude, and specifically, showing gratitude for others. You look around and see that some of the best employees at the company are constantly finding ways to show gratitude to others, and naturally you decide that you want to do this too.
I think that we’d all agree that showing gratitude is probably a good thing in the workplace, and we probably are extrinsically motivated to do this in our new role in this company because we understand that “is what good looks like.” Now, it would also be helpful if you were intrinsically motivated to do this too, but even if it started as an extrinsic motivation, I think that still can be a good thing.
Another example of this comes from college. At my college, it was well known that many students participated in volunteerism, because volunteering and serving others was a core ethos to the university. As a result, many people decided that they wanted to volunteer, especially because they saw that many other of their peers were volunteering as well. I know for a fact that many of my friends were both intrinsically motivated to do this, but certainly there was some extrinsic motivation as well.
I think the point here is that in of itself, they are not a bad thing. When we over-index on them, that’s where it gets dangerous.
Finally, another nuance that I want to call out specifically because it was a blindspot to me is that sometimes, underrepresented populations have to over index to some of the measures because it's their only way to appropriately get credit within an organization. It’s their way of fitting in, and being seen as “passable” in some respects and a way to gain credibility. To be honest, I had never thought about this before, until this person (an underrepresented minority) said it to me, but the minute they explained it, it made a lot of sense.
Q:How have you defined success for yourself?
Thinking and reflecting are powerful tools for me to come up with ideas and hypotheses so here are a few questions that I have used to define my own vision for success:
1.What’s something you would do if you couldn’t tell anyone that you did it?
This is a great question because it makes you ignore the extrinsic benefits for deciding to do something or to pursue a specific goal. It helped me think about and identify the things that I truly enjoy doing and want to do, even if nobody could ever know
2. What does a great Tuesday look like?
Someone once said that life is an average Tuesday. If we take that to be true, and strip away the bells and whistles and highs and lows, what do I want an average Tuesday to look like?
3. What fears do you have?
Fears can be a motivator for us as well as what drives us to take action. Left unchecked or unattended can be problematic. Naming them helps us understand the root cause and monitoring them helps us understand how they are impacting our decision making. I’m more insecure than I would like to admit. It stems alot from my childhood and feeling like I wasn’t in the “in crowd.” I also have a bit of a fear of not being good enough. Knowing that these are my fears and calling them out has helped me better understand how I can truly be the best version of myself, and live a life on my own terms, not someone else’s.
I’d love to hear what you think!
I know I am not the only person to think about this, so I’d love to hear your thoughts too. And thanks everyone for the feedback!