Three Ways Of Defining Success

We all have an internal scoreboard for success. Salary, job title, square footage, relationship status, or a five-year plan. Worse yet, most of us measure our own success not simply by what we’ve accomplished but by how we “rank” with those around us. Did we get better or worse grades? A higher paying job? Why did their relationship last 18 months longer than ours? Did they win? We tend to struggle on birthdays that make us do the math we didn’t want to do: where we thought we’d be by now, where we actually are, and the gap in between. Most of us never sat down and chose the metrics we use to evaluate our success. We just absorbed them, from parents, from culture, from a hundred small comparisons we didn’t consent to. This is the script we inherited. But what if genuine human success is not about doing, accomplishing, or comparing (there is a thought!) but rather about being and experiencing?

Here are three alternative ways to define success:

One: Engagement

Albert Camus spent a lot of time thinking about Sisyphus, the man condemned by the gods to push a boulder up a mountain forever, watching it roll back down every single time. Camus’s conclusion wasn’t tragic, it was almost defiant: “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

If the experience of life really is like pushing a boulder up a hill, then happiness or fulfillment has to come from somewhere inside that act itself. The boulder rolling back down isn’t the point. The point is what it looks like to push it anyway, fully, without needing it to stay at the top to make the effort worth it.

I think success is about the level of engagement we have in life. It’s about actually being present while we are living it, not just waiting to find out if an action or decision would pay off.

Two: Courage