What is the true meaning of success (and how to tell if you're already more successful than you give yourself credit for)?
What is success to you? Is it having a specific job title or reaching a certain level of income? Maybe it's owning your own home, being able to travel wherever you want, or being able to provide for your family. Maybe you’ve not given it much thought.
Or, eek!, you’re working towards someone else’s version of success (maybe parents or peers) rather than taking a moment to define your own.
There isn’t a wrong or right way to achieve success because success alone is subjective.
But there *is* a way to figure out what your version of meaningful success looks like so you move closer to achieving it without fear of comparison.
Defining success
My online profile - my socials and my website all talk about working with ambitious (not "successful") business owners who want more profitability, productivity, fun and confidence.
And yet, sometimes, the word 'ambition' might not resonate. Perhaps you prefer:
Driven
Aspirational
Intentional
Goal-driven
Purposeful
The dictionary tells us that ambition is “a strong desire to do or achieve something”, or it's “the desire and determination, to achieve success".
But if achieving success is the goal, a word when presented without context has so many different meanings, how can we use that word at all? (THIS is the very reason I do not use it!)
And could it be that any feelings of envy or comparison are because we’re working towards someone else’s version of success rather than defining what it means for us personally?
So-called “success” all boils down to greater levels of income and/or social impact.
Income: the money within the business and what that buys: water, food, shelter, clothing, the ability to leverage other people’s time, freedom, holidays, cars, designer handbags, a second property etc.
Social impact: ways to do more good in the world. The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) already breaks down social impact into these 17 objectives:
No poverty
Zero hunger
Good health and wellbeing
Quality education
Gender equality
Clean water and sanitation
Affordable and clean energy
Decent work and economic growth
Industry, innovation and infrastructure
Reduced inequalities
Sustainable cities and communities
Responsible consumption and production
Climate action
Life below water
Life on land
Peace, justice and strong institutions
Partnerships for the goals
How to define what success means to you right now
To create achievable success, goals need to be relative to the present day and will often evolve over time.
For instance - Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs demonstrates that if the basic and physiological needs at the bottom of the triangle aren’t met, then it’s tricky to reach the higher levels because they’re incremental and compounding. Remembering this can help define our own versions of success.
A new business owner is more likely to create a version of achievable success that’s linked to the amount of billable hours and actual money into the business over hours of philanthropic work or huge charitable donations. Their most basic motivations relate to meeting their physiological and basic needs through their business in ways such as regular client work, predictable cash flow, profitability, etc.
A business owner who already has the bottom needs met and feels secure within their business (perhaps a stable cash flow and is making a consistent monthly profit) is more likely to create achievable success focused on the top half of Maslow’s triangle which relates to growth and self-actualisation.
Creating your roadmap to success through the mundanity of excellence
We all know that there’s no such thing as an overnight success, so it’s unlikely that there will be one defining moment that suddenly makes you feel successful, and there definitely isn’t one specific metric that you can monitor. Instead, it’ll be a culmination of different factors that are important to you, so you create your own roadmap to work with that.
I first heard the phrase “mundanity of excellence” in the book Grit by Angela Duckworth*, and it really resonated with me. To give an example of this - it's not glamorous to be an Olympic swimmer and do hours of lengths in the pool every day. But showing up on race day, winning your race, getting the medal? That's fun. That’s what the outside world would consider a success.
But the celebrations of end-goal success are often the only part that we see - we don't see all the mundane hours in the pursuit of excellence that go on behind the scenes. So let’s turn that into part of the process and part of the progress.
STEP 1: Define what success means to you
Is it having a certain job title, earning a specific amount each month, building a sustainable business that enables you to have the flexibility you need around school hours or something else entirely?
What makes that important to you?
What impact does that have on your life?
STEP 2: Decide how you’ll know when you’ve achieved success
Financial goals are easy because they’re measurable, but if that’s not your version of success, how can you quantify your end-goal success?
STEP 3: Reverse engineer how you get there and embrace the mundanity of excellence
Take that big-picture goal and break it down into management chunks that you can move forward to help you achieve your version of success and stay motivated.
An example:
Let's say making six figures is your end goal and your version of success. That's great - good on you! But that goal can't be met until the very end of a period of time - that could take six weeks or six years. Your motivation is going to ebb and flow the longer it takes. PLUS you can’t even control that outcome because it's based on how many clients choose to work with you.
So when you can't directly control that financial success goal because it relies on other people making decisions, let's think about what you can control and therefore influence to heighten your chances of achieving that success. This might be:
how many connection invites you send on LinkedIn
how often you post on your social media channels
how many times you actually add a call to action at the end of your social media post (if you need more clients/revenue - do your followers actually know this?)
how good you get at discovery calls and proposals
how long you spend putting the social in social media through your comments and engagement
the value of your services - you could sell 1 x mega-high-ticket £100,000 thing or 100,000 x £1 things
the social proof you're sharing so that potential clients begin to know, like and trust you
Btw - if a six-figure business is your goal, will you still feel like a success if your turnover is six figures but your profits are negative? THIS is why getting super clear on what success means to you is so important - otherwise you're going to spend time and energy on the wrong things.
STEP 4: Celebrate your success
When you achieve your version of success, how will you celebrate? The high-achieving business owners I know often skip this part because they have so many ideas that they quickly move on to the next goal and the next version of success.
But recognising achievements is a truly important way to feel successful rather than seeing success goals as a tick-box exercise.
Are you already a success?
I’ve spoken before about the gap and the gain - an idea coined by Dan Sullivan from Strategic Coach, and we can use that to think about success.
The gap is where you are versus where you want to be. It’s a bit like the horizon - always out of reach and always moving. When stuck in this gap, it’s easy to feel like there’s always so much more to do, to be, to strive for.
The gain is where you were when you first started versus where you are right now. It’s all of the progress, growth and success you’ve experienced to date, and it’s a way to look back and recognise how far you’ve actually come already.
So that leaves me to ask - when you identify your own version of success, could it be that you’re already more successful than you give yourself credit for?
Something to reflect on, don't you think?
Ready to explore coaching?
If you’re curious about what coaching could help you achieve, why not book a discovery chat with me to see if it’s right for you? No pressure, commitment or obligation. Just a conversation about where you are versus where you want to be and how we can bridge that gap.
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