Are you successful?

“I want to have a successful career”

If I had a dollar for every time someone has said this to me, I’d have at least $254. It’s a totally understandable statement but my follow up question can often stump people or at least get me one of my favourite compliments: “That’s a great question”.

I always follow that statement with “what does a successful career mean to you?” and some people have a definition, a set of goals or markers that would determine if they were successful or not in their own minds.

But plenty of people haven’t thought it through beyond the blanket statement of wanting to be successful.

What I find fascinating about having these conversations is when you start to look at someone else and critique if they are successful or not.

I’ll nominate myself as tribute to be the example, if I retired tomorrow would you say I’ve had a successful career? More of a rhetorical question than you need to actually tell me what you think, because what you consider successful and what I consider successful are likely very different things.

Therefore, I wouldn’t care if you think I’m successful or not because it only really matters what I think.

So to apply that thinking back to you, if you’re assessing your own levels of success and then someone else, is the criteria the same?

I’ve met people who will not consider themselves successful unless their startup reaches Unicorn status. Or Doctors who aren’t successful UNLESS they recognised as the top of their field.

Then I know plenty of people where success would mean not having to work at all.

Should factors like your starting position in life change the bar on success? If you were born into a rich family, given top private education, a loving family environment and never faced any sort of prejudice in life, do you need to reach a higher level of success vs someone who had the opposite cards dealt to them in life?

I would imagine plenty of people might read this and say things like “you shouldn’t compare yourself to others” or “don’t judge anyone else, worry about yourself” which I actually agree with but the point I’m trying to make is that while we make statements like this, we can often still let them creep in when assessing our own levels of success.

So the rhetorical question to ask yourself, your partner/roommate/work bff this week:

What does success mean to you?