Do We Have To Measure Success?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what success means. To me. Because that’s what’s important, isn’t it? What we each personally think of as success. Not what someone else says it is. We are the ones living in our lives, not them.

But it’s so easy to forget with the multitude of ways offered to us on how to be successful. How do we know which way is right for us?

To cope with the information overload, some people turn off all information that comes to them. They don’t read their email or pick up their phone, and if not looking feels like success to them, then I celebrate that victory.

But for me, that would be hiding away from the most pressing problem. What do I need to know to be, feel, experience success? If I know that, then I could choose what to read, who to listen to, what to do with the minutes of my day.

I could be clearer about how to be what I think of as a successful author, or artist, or coach, or teacher, or wife, or mother. There are so many pieces of life I want to feel that I am successful at doing. Maybe it would be easier to look at it as one thing.

At the end of the day, can I answer “yes” to the question, was it a successful day?

When I worked in the financial industry, they tried to teach me that success was how many new clients I got that week, how many sales I made, and how much money was in my paycheck each month. That’s an easy way to measure success, isn’t it? Numbers. Something we can put our fingers on and say, ‘Look, I did this much. I am successful.”

In the book writing business, some people define success by how many books they write in a month. Seriously, not even a year. A month. If that is success for them, then I am right behind them clapping enthusiastically for them.

But when I try to make measuring things my version of success, it only makes me feel unhappy, frustrated—and ultimately—unsuccessful.

I can’t base my idea of success on numbers.

Don’t get me wrong. I love data, numbers, and tracking how I am doing. It keeps me traveling in the direction I want to go, and when the numbers tell me that an advertising campaign worked, or today more people bought my books then yesterday, that definitely adds to my feeling of success.

But that alone isn’t success.

Instead, I need to know if at the end of the day did I do things that made me happy. Or if it was something I didn’t want to do but had to, did I find a way to do with grace? Did I provide a means for someone else to be happy? Was I of service? Did I play? Did I have fun? Did I appreciate all that life has to offer?

Did I keep my agreements with myself and others?

That last question is a big one.

What agreements have I made? Did I make ones that I don’t want to keep? Why make them then? Was it because I knew it was the right thing to do, which in the end would help me feel successful, or did I make it because an outside source suggested it as the right thing to do?

Questioning what success is is a deep and essential search. Which means it can’t be answered all at once. But I can make finding the answer an intent. I can move towards discovering, and then acting on, what makes me feel successful. One step at a time. Gracefully. Without judgment.

That in itself would be success, wouldn’t it?