Measuring Success

The way I start with every new coaching client is by defining where they are in life, in that moment. This means deciding how to evaluate the present state of their life which means this will also be the measure used to define success in the future.  What I sometimes find is that people use measures to evaluate how happy they are with their life which have been defined by other people.  When people begin to realise that they have been defining their happiness based on the standards and expectations of other people or society in general, they begin to understand that this is part of the reason why they have been dissatisfied with their life.

Many people that I coach are measured by things like profit growth, market share or delivering a budget.  In the business world, people will talk about examples of success in terms of those who have built billion dollar businesses or raised incredible amounts of venture capital. While I understand that these are necessary performance indicators for a business they not terribly inspirational or satisfying in the mid to long term for individual human beings. This is why it is important to be aware of how relevant the measurement of your success is to your personal values and vision for your life. The truly iconic entrepreneurial leaders of the past decade like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk followed a vision to their success.  This could not be replicated by only measuring financial results.

I personally have the opposite problem, if you can call it a problem. Although I have had financial success, I am not driven by money. Annual bonuses did little or nothing to motivate my performance in the corporate world, which is not to say that I did profit from performance bonuses in most years. I am also not interested in gaining attention and certainly have no interest in fame. I am as happy to share my knowledge and experience with one person as I am to a large group of people. So it is a challenge for me to work at getting likes or followers. This is also why I have just hired someone else to manage my social media. To get over my lack of drive to continually pursue wealth I focus on how financial freedom can help me to share my gifts with the world.  That said, my financial success seems to be a byproduct of my approach to life rather than the act of measuring success based on the size of my bank account.

Society will provide examples and expectations for what success should mean that can cause people to pursue empty goals, create irrelevant expectations and chase a life that is not very fulfilling.  There is nothing wrong with financial success or gaining the attention of masses of people but these will always leave you chasing more.  Much like happiness is not some hedonistic pursuit of as much pleasure that you can experience, success is not about accumulating as much wealth or power as is possible. In life, the race is only with yourself. The most satisfying things in life are not things but experiences such as inner growth, learning, the process of creating something new, generating new ideas, and giving to others. If you want to succeed in generating happiness then making sure that how you measure success is based on your own values and not someone else’s.