If you’re reading this, you might find yourself in a similar position to me a few years ago before I quit my job. I was working as a software engineer, making a comfortable salary and living on my own. I had enough free time for my hobbies, friends, and family. You could say I was successful, but it didn’t feel that way to me. Something was missing; I needed to define my own success.
I didn’t feel satisfied with my life because there was no meaning in what I was doing. As a software engineer, I spent hours aligning pixels, debugging trivial issues, and attending meetings that could have been emails. At the end of the day, I was mentally drained from being on the screen, but had gained no personal fulfillment from the day’s work.
One day, I thought: what am I really doing? I reflected on why I didn’t feel successful and satisfied with my life. Fast forward a couple of months, and I quit my job. I had decided that my personal definition of success didn’t involve making a lot of money, or having a job that my family thought was acceptable. For me, success meant dedicating my time to climbing full time. Here are the steps I took to define success for myself.
Identify external influences
First, identify the external influences in your life. We don’t think about it, but external influences play a huge part in the decisions we make. Some common ones are our friends and families. These forces can be helpful, but they can also lead us astray and cause us to make decisions that aren’t right for ourselves.
It’s important to figure out who and what in your life exert influence over you. Once you do this, you can make decisions for yourself.
Family
One of the most significant external influences in my life was my family. I grew up in an immigrant household, my parents and I having immigrated from Vietnam shortly after I was born. If you’re an immigrant or have immigrant parents, then you may be familiar with the pressures that parents can exert. Growing up, I felt the pressure to find a job that made a lot of money, because my parents sacrificed a lot immigrating to this country.
I would end up internalizing this motivation, and it was something that continued to influence me from the background. It was one reason I became a software engineer, because it was a career that I knew my parents would find acceptable. I allowed my family to influence what success meant for me without prioritizing what I actually thought it should be.
Social Circle
Another external influence is our social circle. I say social circle instead of friends because we don’t even have to be close to someone for them to influence us.
You might think, “Oh, my friends don’t have any direct influence over me”, but the people you surround yourself with will always exert an influence on you. For example, imagine you surround yourself with friends who all work in finance, have families, and own houses. You hang out with them on the weekend, and they seem to be happy as they give you a tour of the house they just bought. You find yourself impressed, and you think, “Wow, they’re pretty successful!”
Eventually, this will affect your notion of what success means. You may end up thinking that working in a bank and starting a family is what you should do as well, without stopping to think about whether you actually enjoy working in finance, or whether you want to have kids.
One of my friends had strongly influenced me to become a software engineer. When I think about it now, I wasn’t even close to that friend; he was simply someone I knew from college who had recently started a career in software engineering. That’s why I said earlier that anyone is your social circle can influence you.
I’m not saying all this to mean that our friends and family will lead us in the wrong direction. That’s not the case. Often, we can count on them for their support and wisdom. What I’m trying to say is our friends and family can unknowingly shape our definition of success. And when we don’t stop to consider what we truly find meaningful, that’s when we can make decisions that aren’t right for ourselves.
Determine what success isn’t
After identifying the external influences in your life, sit down and consider the key question: What doesn’t success mean to you? This might sound like a strange question, but filtering out what success doesn’t mean to you will help you make decisions independent of other people.
Before quitting my job, I decided success did not involve making a lot of money, or having a prestigious career. These things weren’t fulfilling. My definition of success was making progress as a climber. I would continue to develop my definition of success throughout my career as a climber, but this was my starting point.
It can be hard to discount previous metrics of success, especially if that’s how you’ve defined yourself for the majority of your life. Take your time with this process. Consider journaling about it. Discuss your thoughts with trusted friends or mentors.
If you’re struggling with how to define your own success, you can also think about these questions.
Questions to ask
What brings you joy? What brings you meaning? Prioritize joy and meaning, and put yourself at the forefront of this decision. Don’t let negative emotions affect your thinking. Put aside fear, embarrassment, and shame.
Maybe you’ve been wanting to start a project but fear that you’ll look like a novice at first. That’s ok! Your definition of success doesn’t have to involve being a professional.
That’s the beauty of crafting your own definition of success: you not only get to decide what success is but also what success isn’t. You can decide that giving your undivided attention and being fully present with your new project is enough. That can be how you define your own success.
Final thoughts
Again, don’t factor in what your friends and family will think, or whether they will approve. Your friends and family will always have their opinions on what you should do, but it’s your life, not theirs. Don’t think about them; think about yourself.
If this post was helpful, I recommend reading about how to define success at work.
Let me know in the comments if you enjoyed the post, and feel free to email me if you have any questions. I wish you the best on your journey!
