Defining Success For Ourselves
In 2018 when I was fresh out of the Marines, I had a job as a project manager while I finished up grad school. My job wasn’t really aligned to my studies, nor what I wanted to do (but the bills still needed to get paid). During a meeting at this job a director on another team was trying to schedule a follow up meeting for the evening (an after hours meeting to talk about another meeting should give you insight to this place). I said I wouldn’t be able to attend because I had a class at that time. His curiosity was piqued and the expected question of “where are you getting your MBA from?” was immediately asked. I let him know I was actually pursuing a degree in performance psychology, and what followed was totally unexpected.
He told me I was making a huge mistake. Informing me that any degree other than an MBA was a total waste of time and I should switch. He went on to say how his MBA was incredibly helpful for putting him on his career trajectory, and if it wasn’t for his MBA program he wouldn’t be where he was that day. It ended with him saying if I wanted to be successful in that line of work, then I needed an MBA. Didn’t stay long at that company, and in the five plus years since that conversation I completed my Master’s degree, my Doctorate, developed dozens of learning and development programs that have had a positive impact on countless different teams and individuals alike all done with hours and hours (and hours) of work. More importantly? I loved doing it.
This might be a similar conversation that others have had over the years (albeit a little less direct). Someone tells us how they found success, whether it was through work or school or something else entirely. They say if we want to be successful like them, then we need to follow their path. That the only way to make it to the proverbial “top”, is to do what they did. That there is only one path to success and it was the one they took. The problem is, this can’t be further from reality. This is their definition of success, and they are defining what it takes to get there. They determined what success looked like, and got on the specific path they identified to reach it. They had the internal driver to make it a reality and were willing to put in the necessary work to reach the point where they could call themselves successful.
To quote the great American philosopher J. Lebowski “yeah, well, that’s just like your opinion man…”.
The thing is, we are not them. We won’t have the same goals or the same intrinsic motivation to make that success a reality. Why? Because we don’t care enough. When someone else defines success for us, we see the work as an obligation. We lack the internal drivers to get it done, and maybe even won’t complete it at all. We end up going through the motions (probably unhappily) and expect the same result as the person whos path we are trying to follow. That is why the best person to define success for us, is ourselves. We need to take ownership of this idea, that we are the ones who can define success. We need to shut out external influences (that tell us our degree is a waste of time) and continue working towards something we want to accomplish. This isn’t just about our professional role though, this is about anything in our lives we want to achieve and be successful at.
There is a key piece we have to remember though, which is the work. It is one thing to define it, it is another to make it a reality. It means allocating the time when we can, making sacrifices, continuing to learn and grow with whatever it is we are trying to accomplish. That is why it is so important that we define it, because we need to love the work. We need to love the early morning’s, the hours over the weekends, and even when people tell us it isn’t worth it. Because thats what it really takes to accomplish something. However, if we are the ones to define it, the ones to own, and the ones to chart the path...then we can make it a reality.
