What does it mean to be successful?

Many years ago, I worked in a busy and fast-growing consulting firm. By all accounts, I was doing well — I was getting the recognition, the new projects, the “growth opportunities,” the salary increases, the ownership opportunities that defined success. I was good at my work. I genuinely liked my colleagues.

On an average day, I commuted 90 minutes to work, worked a long day and commuted 90 minutes back home, listening to books on tape and energizing music to switch gears. I’d come in the door, figure out some kind of dinner while talking about work, have a glass of wine, sort of watch TV while reading a book. I'd fall asleep.

At 5 a.m., it was time to do it all over again. On Fridays, I’d arrive home with my computer and a bit of work to “catch up on over the weekend”. The weekend that was supposed to be personal time, family time, social time, creative writing time, gardening time, fixing up my new house time.

One day, at 5 a.m., while sitting on the deck watching the sun come up, I realized that there was absolutely nothing wrong with my job. It was an entrepreneurial environment that engaged my creativity and offered plenty of opportunities for growth. I’d negotiated to work from home one day a week. Yet very little about it was right. For me.

I had become really good at climbing the wrong ladder.

Fast forward six months, and I had quit and was working in a nonprofit environment. I had a 40-minute each way commute, a 35-hour work week, a role that required autonomy, creativity, strategy and the ability to live on a nonprofit paycheck. That was a great fit for a number of years. Until my life and my needs changed, as career and lifestyle needs tend to do.

So, when I began coaching, I immersed myself in all of the talk about work-life balance, leaning in, shorter work weeks and remote work policies and other discussions on women (and men) managing, surviving, adapting and thriving in the workplace.

For years, we’ve been having versions of the same discussions around these topics and not much has really changed except for the increasing level of burnout of employees and managers who were once in my same shoes. While the conversations about thriving and creating sustainable success have become more numerous, we’re always circling the same assumptions. It feels like a big part of this whole work-life conversation is continually absent.

Who is defining what it means to be successful?

To make a valuable contribution? To be a leader? Whose rules are we actually playing by, and is there truly room for the increasing number of people who want to rewrite those rules (or throw them out altogether)?

What does it mean to define the success you want?

For some of us, being the woman in the board room or the guy in the corner office is really what it’s all about. Others would rather own the building the room sits in. Some of us are more fulfilled by technical roles and the mechanics of problem-solving than by moving up to management where they’re no longer engaged in what they love.

Some of my clients thrive on 70-hour weeks and building something new. Some are at our best with a three-day work week. Some of us want to take— or have taken— a few years off to focus on raising children. Some of us would rather walk away from the traditional workplace (if such a place still exists in the new hybrid work world) and play a different game altogether.

Quite often, what we want and need in our work lives changes over time.

I believe that the writer Christopher Morley had it right when he said “There is only one success — to be able to spend your life in your own way.” Yet, it’s not always easy to “make it all work” or to figure out what’s next when that’s your goal. More often than not, this is because we’re playing by rules that have nothing to do with how we want to be spending our time, energy and life.

It’s easier, often, to get caught up in expectations that have little to do with making our own way. We get sucked in to what does not align with our values, our strengths, our priorities, our goals or our needs and the shared needs of the other important people in our lives.

We keep our head down, follow the rules and call this being successful. Or we run full-tilt. But it doesn’t feel quite right because that’s the wrong way to go about thriving. And quite often, that approach leaves us unhappy, unfocused and perhaps on the road to burnout— or feeling lost about what’s next for us.

Personal leadership means defining what it means to be successful for yourself. (And work is a part, but it’s not the whole.)

What if we shift the conversation from what the rules are and how to compete and towards embracing and making room for a wider variety of strengths, viewpoints, values and contributions? What if the conversation was about defining and creating sustainable success that is as individual as you are?

Leadership really does begin at home, with each of us getting clear on what we truly want our careers and our lifestyles to look and feel like, aside from external expectations. It means getting clear on what it is that you are actually working towards and why. And there’s no external authority that has the answer to those questions.

Let’s talk about that for a change. When you’re aligned with an authentic-to-you vision and centering your strengths and values, the rest will eventually take care of itself.