How Do YOU Measure Success?

Recently, I experienced a health scare.

You know, something happens out of the ordinary to an important part of the body, and suddenly doctors are throwing some potentially life-altering possibilities at you. That kind of health scare.

I’m fine now, and I’m in the midst of doing all the necessary follow-up appointments to make sure I stay that way. Nonetheless, a health scare can be one of those great wake-up calls of life. This one really sent me for a loop. Maybe because this time it wasn’t a story about someone else. It was me. Maybe because we are reminded daily of our mortality. Maybe because I can see my “best-before date” a little more clearly than I could in earlier decades. Or maybe I simply decided to treat it as a Moment of Truth to stop and check in with myself and my life.

Whatever the reason, it forced me to ask an important question: Am I living a successful life?

And the obvious follow-up question: What exactly is a successful life—for me?

So, how do you measure success?

Is it the number of hours you work? The letters behind your name? The title on your business card? Is it the number of followers you have, the likes you get, the size of your house, your bank account, your investment portfolio?

Is it your level of education? The goals you have accomplished? The ladder you have climbed? Is it the accumulation of stuff? The number of people who know you? The number of friends you have?

Or is it having time for family and friends? Having freedom? Feeling healthy? Making a difference? Being able to look in the mirror and genuinely like the person looking back?

One of the questions I often ask my coaching clients is: Whose definition of success are you living?

Is it yours? Or is it your parents’? Your industry’s? Your colleagues’? Society’s? Some version of success you picked up along the way and never really stopped to question? Because here’s the thing: you can be incredibly successful at achieving something you don’t actually want. You can climb the ladder only to discover it was leaning against the wrong wall. You can build an impressive career and still feel like something is missing. You can accomplish all the things on the list and still wonder, “Is this it?”

And over the years I have realized that our definition of success is allowed to change. What looked like success at 30 may not look like success at 50 or 60. The things we chased earlier in life may lose some of their shine. And things we once took for granted, like health, time, relationships, and freedom, may suddenly move to the top of the list. That doesn’t mean we have stopped being ambitious. It means we may have become more intentional about what we are ambitious for.

So here are a few questions I invite you to sit with:

• What does success look like for me now (whatever stage of life I am in)?
• What am I spending my time and energy on, and is it aligned with what matters most?
• What have I been saying is important to me that my calendar doesn’t actually support?
• What am I tolerating that I no longer want to tolerate?
• What would “enough” look like for me?

As coaches, we encourage people to reflect often and make sure they are living their lives by design. Because if you aren’t designing your life, there is a pretty good chance you are living someone else’s design. And that may or may not work out very well for you.

We use tools that can help build awareness, create action, and perhaps most importantly, hold you accountable to yourself. Here are three simple ones you might want to consider or revisit:

The Wheel of Life
A simple way to look in the mirror and rate how fulfilled you currently feel in eight important areas of your life. It’s a snapshot. It can help you see where your life is working well and where you might want to shift your attention, time and energy. Sometimes that means making a small habitual change. Sometimes it means setting a big, audacious goal.

The Do, Have and Be List
Take a few minutes and start your list. It’s more than a bucket list. It invites you to think about everything you want to Do, Have and Be for the rest of your life. I particularly like the “Be” part. We are often so focused on what we want to accomplish or acquire that we forget to ask ourselves about the person we want to be.

The Reinvention of You
This is a guide to help you get clear about your future. Reinvention suggests that we are never finished. We can change our minds and we can change direction. We can let go of things that no longer serve us. We can decide that the next chapter gets to look different from the last one.

So, how do YOU measure success?

Amidst my reflection, I reminded myself of a poem that first connected with me in my early twenties. For decades, it has been a pillar of what matters most to me. It may not be an all-encompassing definition of success, but it makes a whole lot of sense to me. It is often attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson, and here is how I remember it from when I first heard it and memorized it from a cassette tape, recorded by the late Denis Waitley in his program entitled Seeds of Greatness:

“How do you measure success?

To laugh often and love much:
To win the respect of intelligent people
And the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics
And endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty;
To find the best in others;
To give one’s self;
To leave the world a little better,
Whether by a healthy child,
A garden patch,
A redeemed social condition, or a job well done;
To have played and laughed with enthusiasm
And sung with exultation;
To know even one life has breathed easier
Because you have lived…
This is to have succeeded. ”

And perhaps most importantly, it is about knowing that the way I am spending my time is reasonably aligned with what I say matters most to me.

So, maybe the better overall question is: “Am I successful at living the life I actually want to live?”

And if the answer isn’t quite what you want it to be, that’s okay. You don’t have to blow up your life, quit your job, sell your house, or move. Maybe it’s just starting small. Maybe it’s being intentional about your next conversation, a boundary you need to elevate, more time doing stuff you love to do, and tolerating less. For me, it’s often making a difference for a client, protecting my time, seeing people I love, and saying yes to something that brings me joy.

That, to me, is a pretty successful way to live.