What is Your Definition of Success?

I keep typing the word succeed.

I can’t help it. When I write about entrepreneurship, about achieving goals and doing the things that matter – it seems the word I have to keep coming back to is success.

We are here to help you succeed…

Here are some success strategies…

But before I type the word anymore, I want to spend some time thinking about what success really means. It’s a word with many definitions for many people, but something we all strive for.

I won’t take this too deep, because there are many places I can go with this topic. My goal for today, though, is to get you thinking about what success means for you – and make sure you don’t waste your life chasing after an artificial success.

Here are a few points I want to make.

1. You need to define what success means in your life…

Like I said before, success can look many different ways. But you need to decide what it means for yourself. The best way to do this is to picture yourself at the end of your life.

Think about being an old man or woman, sitting back and reflecting. When you look back, what do you want to see? What do you want to be able to say? What will matter? When you have lived your life in a way that you can look back and be content, this is what success means to you.

2. …And then live your life with that definition in mind

What’s mindblowing is if you actually do this, and look at the end of your life and what really matters, you will see what you prioritize today doesn’t really line up with those end goals. This has to change.

If we agree that success can only be defined by ourselves, then I think we can also agree that most of the time we pursue a false “success” defined by people in our lives. We have expectations to live up to. We have status markers to live up to.

And when you really step back and look at the life you are living, you realize the choices you are making are to impress people – not bring you closer to what you truly value.

3. The enemy of success

What’s the opposite of success? The first word to come to mind is failure. But I don’t think failure should be taken in that context. Failure can often be a step on the way to success. If we are living our lives in a way that matters, like we described above, we are going to fail along the way.

But what keeps us from true success? That’s a better question. What would cause us to look back at our lives when we are old, and think I haven’t succeeded, I’ve failed?

I think the answer goes back to the beginning when we look at our definition of success. I think the most likely source of feeling like we failed is if we look back and see that we spent our greatest efforts trying to live up to the expectations of others.

Francis Chan said, “Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.”

It all comes back to our definition of success. Failure may not be the worst thing in the world, if it’s moving us forward to our long term goal of success.

The bigger tragedy would be to find success, but then look back and realize it all meant nothing.

So now it’s time to answer the question: How do you define success?