How Do You Define Success?

Money, fame, or something else? (Spoiler: It doesn't fit in a nutshell)

Let’s have some real talk (as if I could do it any other way). I’m sharing my thoughts on this topic from a first-person perspective because I can only filter and sift life through my own lens and reflect it outward in ways that hopefully resonate and make you also ponder the big questions. I’ve been kicking around this idea of the word Success and considering what it means for each of us. Do we get swept away in judging others for their successes or lack thereof? Do we focus on what’s important? Do we each define success differently? Do we give ourselves grace, and credit, for the successes we’ve had? Do we beat ourselves up for the [failures] times we didn’t reach “success”? Below are my thoughts on this word, this subject, this life concept.

I go about my days:

1. working for pay

2. thinking about writing

3. doing chores and needful things (cooking, cleaning, eating, paying obligations, planning my schedule…)

4. not bothering with capital letters or much punctuation in lists

5. mulling over everything (!)

6. taking notes and writing snippets for later longform exploration

7. planning future books

8. writing current books

9. fleshing out ideas for this newsletter; reading dictionaries

10. examining myself and my relation to others and to the world to keep making myself (hopefully) a better person

11. wishing I could have crammed this into a more succinct 10-part list, but knowing I need to add this one about how I’m also always working on graphics for my books/newsletter/merch and wishing I were a better artist so I could do awesome logo art without the mystery of how to create it…

To that end, as I’ve mentioned in the past, my mind is always churning, working, puzzling.

What is success?

What is your idea of success? Does your idea of its meaning come from what society defines as “success” - or does it come from your own designing?

If I asked you, “have you been successful at life?” what would your answer be?

If you said, “no,” why did you say so?

If you said, “yes,” why?

Dictionary says:

favorable achievement, good fortune, accomplish successfully

Thesaurus says:

SUCCESSFUL: triumphant, flourishing, thriving

SUCCEED: thrive, prevail, triumph, supersede

Those above “definitions” don’t clear it up, do they? Are they at all what you would have thought of the word “success” without looking it up in those guides?

I see that this is why we’re left with not really knowing the answer to the question,

“What is success?”

Personally, I’ll take the thesaurus synonyms as my definition.

I’m going for: triumphant, flourishing, thriving

Next, we have to look at the question: “Success at what?”

I’ve successfully completed three college degrees. Success!!

I’ve never been able to gain appropriate salary recognition of those degrees. Failure?

I’ve self-published one book, with four more in the works. Success?

I’ve never been a traditionally published book author (yet). Failure?

I’ve been published in a magazine. Success!!

I’m terrible at budgeting and am a complete ostrich when it comes to related stressors. Failure?

I’m creative, optimistic, and strive to be kind. Success?

I’m impulsive. Failure?

I have robust zest for life. Success?

I lived a nomadic lifestyle for over three years and traveled, visited 14-states, marked off several bucket list items. Success? (It meant I was “unhoused” in the traditional sense, which so many would say was “failure”) How do we count it?

I forget the names of people I know, or just met (always have, it’s not new). Failure?

I’ve been a podcast co-host for 3 years on an award-winning podcast with a phenomenal host and producer. Success!!

I’ve written on Substack for over two years, consistently. Success!

I’ve achieved (as of today) 699 followers, 181 subscribers, and a handful of paid subscribers. Success!!

I’ve failed to meet the Substack Success metric of 10,000 subscribers and enough premium paid subscribers to become a full-time writer and to be listed on the “rising newsletters” list(s). Failure?

I have some deep and lasting friendships. Success!!

I have lost many friends along the way and there are a few (I hope not many) people who think/have thought I’m mean, bossy, opinionated, not worth keeping as a friend. Failure?

I’m triumphantly surviving, thriving in many ways, and flourishing as a writer and author.

When people ask me if I’m a Success, my answer is:

In some ways, yes. In other ways, no.

What I’m most successful at is continually striving for success. I’m successful at not giving up. I’m successful at kicking life in the chest when it has whacked me in the knees. I’m successful at doing my best each day, continually looking for new ways to tackle problems, practicing being a worthy friend, and sharing my writing and creative endeavors with the world at large.

I don’t think we can be successful at all areas of life. Oh, some people seem to enjoy more “good fortune” than others, and some people seem to always have “success” land in their laps, but even those people have areas of struggle.

We are complex beings. We have complex problems. We have endless ways to find success, and equally endless ways to fail at attempts to become successful.

If, at the end of my days, someone will honestly be able to say at my funeral/wake/memorial:

She loved fiercely, and was fiercely loved.

I will count that as “success at life.”