You Are Not Your Successes
And certainly not your setbacks either.
Who you are is comprised of innumerable moments, passions, values, books read, conversations had, relationships maintained — platonic, romantic, and everything in between — and so much more.
Who you are is not what you have done.
It is easy to believe and apply the truth that we are not our failures, but we need to be reminded that we are not our successes either.
Achievements are great and ought to be celebrated. That diploma, hang it up on the wall! That kickball trophy, display it proudly on the mantle! Your art, let the world see it! Your Medium stats, be proud of your craft!
The reminder is not that we shouldn’t take pride in our successes. The reminder is that these achievements and successes come out of who you are, the work you put in to get to these places, the passion behind why you want to share your story, and the values you have fought to keep in the midst of criticism and adversity.
You are who you are because of why you do what you do — not because of what you do.
If we base our lives around our failures we, will be miserable. If we base our lives around our successes, we will lose sight of ourselves.
Maintaining a Sense of Self Through Successes
Maintaining your sense of self, who you are fundamentally or who you want to strive to become, is increasingly more difficult in our time. With advertising, marketing, and data tracking controlling what we see on our news feeds and commercials showing us the picture of perfection, it is easy to lose sight of our own interests.
For example, I had to do some (for me) complicated work in Excel which involved me searching for a few tutorials. Now, for the rest of the week, Google assumes I am an accountant and now all of my ads have nothing to do with me.
We will encounter competing views of ourselves in our relationships as well. People will place upon us an image of ourselves they they wish we would be. This can be done from pure motives, but can complicate our sense of identity nonetheless. This can also be done from impure motives which will leave us feeling used as a means to an end.
With so much around us competing for who we are, we need to be on our own team.
We need to continue to invest in ourselves and in the values, passions, stories, relationships, interests, etc. that make us who we are. This is true in the midst of our setbacks and our successes.
If we only focus our attention and energy on our successes, we can end up neglecting important, life giving interests. Whether it is in writing, creating, inventing, coaching, or any thing else we can measure, we need to be reminded that we are more than our successes.
Be confident in who you are, not just what you have done.
The Cost of Personal Neglect.
If we do not continue to pursue our values, the reasons why we create or work in the first place, we will be far more susceptible to burnout and fatigue. When we are measuring success, then, let’s measure it not in terms of numbers but in terms of whether or not we pursued our values during the creation and work.
If we are focused on our values throughout the process, we will be prone to satisfaction rather than disappointment.
If we are only focused on the sum of our successes, we will always be prone to comparison, envy, or never feeling like we are enough. When we attach who we are to what we do, we can quickly lose our footing in the world. We need to be anchored in our values. We need to stoke the flames that drive us to succeed in the first place.
To succeed without striving to keep our values can leave us as a hollow shell, devoid of purpose, drifting from one empty fleeting success to another.
A Final, Personal Note
As of this this sentence, I have made $0.05 by writing and I have never been more excited about writing. Last year I finished up 2 Masters degrees and this year I will be starting PhD work in Counseling. Throughout all of these years, I have had (hard emphasis on had) to write. A lot. But I have always enjoyed the process of researching, writing, and interacting with others about subjects I enjoy.
During this time, however, I never wrote because I wanted to write. So finding Medium and the community of writers here has lead to me pursuing my values regardless of the fact that I am not getting a grade. The motivation now comes from a passion and desire to learn and communicate with others who are passionate about knowledge — and that is what I truly value.
