What is Your Definition of Success?
If you were to look up the word “success” in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, these are the two definitions that they list:
“Degree or measure of succeeding”
“Favorable or desired outcome”
Throughout your life these definitions of success will change for you. A few examples could be:
Obtaining the highest level of college degree that you have set out to achieve.
Securing that first job in your career of choice.
Traveling the world.
Getting married and starting a family.
Moving closer to your immediate family after living elsewhere for a period of time.
Becoming financially independent.
The choices are endless based on your definition of success and will evolve and change over time, both personally and professionally. There are times when these intersect with one another.
You’ll likely have a true North star that will be a culmination of your life’s work - something that you want to hand down to your kids, as an example.
Determining these are important and then you need to take these 3 steps:
Document what goals you want to achieve and how they will how you have success.
How will you achieve your goals to help you achieve success? You need to have actionable steps. Make sure these are in bite size pieces and not something that seems too big such as “become financially independent.” That might be your end goal but there are going to be a series of steps to get there.
After you have these actionable steps documented, ensure that you’re reviewing them on a quarterly and yearly progress to track your improvements and adjusting where necessary.
Throughout each step of my life I have had several areas defined as achieving success. I accomplished some of them and fell short in other areas. Currently I have a new set of goals to achieve my immediate definition of success. For each of them I have a series of actionable tasks and I regularly review whether I’m moving the ball forward.
If your definition of success has shifted, that’s perfectly ok since life is ever evolving. But, you don’t want to be someone who looks back 10 years from now and wonder why you didn’t accomplish everything that your younger self had set out to.