What Does Success Mean and When?
What does success mean? The big question on so many people’s minds is, “Am I successful? Am I doing well or am I currently blowing this opportunity at life?”
Oh boy. Most would say that the general consensus of what success is now is wildly different than what it used to be. There are fewer and fewer people content with working trade jobs because only doctors, lawyers and famous people are actually successful. There are fewer and fewer people getting married because commitment is not as fashionable as fucking a new person every weekend. Hell, there are fewer and fewer people happy to just watch a sunset, because if you aren’t taking a picture of it so you can put it on Instagram and build your following, then what’s the point?
Success, however, has been and always will be the same thing, and that’s the fulfillment of your values. So what’s shifting is not success, but values. Certain aspects of life and career are being celebrated now that weren’t celebrated before and the impression that said celebration leaves on us is causing us to reflect on how we measure up within that area. People with fame are getting more attention so we start to ask well how many people are following me and care about what I do? Is my life cool enough?
The emptiness, however, that often catches up to those that do end up making millions of dollars or acquiring millions of fans is a reflection of the fact their true values and the real blueprint they have of their life, are not being met with entirety. That said, the first ingredient necessary to defining success is to define it for yourself rather than to let it be defined by others. What does success look like for you and how can you be successful within your own, personal values which are the real contributors of meaning into your life? We’re all embarking on our own paths within our relationships, careers, bodies, spirituality, the list goes on. It’s important to devote ourselves to each path in such a way that reflects how much we care about it, not how much others care about it. One thing to be aware of is that other people’s devotion can take effect in two forms:
The first is what your group tells you directly — so being told directly by your best friend that something is wrong if you aren’t married by 30. The 2nd is what you assume your group is thinking — so assuming that your friends, who are all married by 30, think you’ve failed because you’re 30 and aren’t married. But the 2nd doesn’t stop there. The 2nd can expand from how you feel you’re fitting in with your friends and family to how you feel you’re fitting in with your town, how you’re fitting in with your age bracket, how you’re fitting in with your ethnicity, how you’re fitting in with this time period, how you’re fitting in with the whole world.
So mapping out the road to success really begins with you defining it for yourself. Buyer beware that in identifying your version of success you will certainly find a degree of influence from your environment. The trick is to make sure it’s a healthy degree. For example, if you want to get your Masters degree and everyone else in your family happens to have one, that’s all right. But if you’re getting your Masters because everyone else in your family has one, that could be unhealthy and not an accurate reflection of what you really want.
Once you’ve sorted this out and you’ve gotten in touch with what your values are and what it means to you to be successful within them, try breaking that success down into two subcategories: practicality and pride.
If you’re deeply passionate about being a musician for example, assessing success from a practical standpoint would mean asking yourself how much money you need to attain from your music career. Does success mean just a few gigs a year? Does it mean paying the bills? Does it mean more money than you’ve ever dreamed of? What it means to you specifically will help you create a detailed metric for yourself.
Same goes for the subcategory of pride. Does success within the realm of pride mean committing to the daily struggle involved? Does it mean writing your own lyrics? Does it mean sticking to one genre? Does it mean performing onstage with Beyonce? It’s different for everyone. So once you’ve gotten clear about how you and only you view success within any given endeavor, you’ll likely feel a confident rush of momentum and be excited to crack on. Fantastic! But it’s important to remember here that for as much time goes by, change and influence will continue to be a factor in your life, thus either strengthening or weakening this metric of success that you’ve laid out. For this reason it’s essential to keep track of your journey and continually check in with yourself. Check in with yourself about how you’re feeling and how your actions have changed or stayed the same. It is only by doing this that you’ll be able to gauge your true level of interest in any your endeavor.
Say your original metric for success as a musician was to just create a reliable country band with your friends and play in local bars once a month. Great! Sounds like someone who also values their friendships, too. Fast forward ten years, you’ve become a smashing success, left your friends for more talented replacements and are pulling your hair out because you’re not headlining Stagecoach this year. Has the metric changed? Yes. Is it healthy? Maybe. Maybe your passion has just grown and you’re still in touch with your friends and the only reason you’re no longer playing with them is because they decided they have different interests. But maybe you fired your friends and the big reason you’re pissed about not headlining Stagecoach is because you want to stick it up their ass and prove to them and everyone that you’re the best and you don’t need them.
Enter greed, showmanship and insatiability. It’s safe to say in a scenario like this that your metric has changed severely as a result of the fact that the music itself is no longer enough for you. Exterior changes and influences have altered your actions, thus damaging and dislodging your original sense of value not only with music, but also with your friends and most likely a few other areas of life.
No matter where you are in the journey of the musician, the one question you can always come back to is indeed “what does success mean”? And you’ll answer it from where ever you are at that point. But perhaps the more revealing answer to pay attention to is not just what it means, but how the very nature of asking yourself this question makes you feel. Examining the nature of success is something we do constantly, and for many, it’s a painful process. If the very question is painful and disorienting, it likely means you’re unhappy with where you are, unsatisfied and therefore at risk for arriving at the part of the musician story we don’t like, with varying degrees of what you have to show for it. If this is the case, reassess your true values and whether or not your actions are aligned with them. Chances are they aren’t, but there’s always a chance to hit the reset button.
