Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about success at work, and how it means different things to different people.  When I first graduated college, I thought success was setting and then achieving a goal to reach a certain level.  But for someone who is naturally ambitious, this doesn’t really work.  Because once you reach that level, you want to go higher.  Eventually, you will rise as high as it’s reasonable to expect, and then what?  Do you feel like a failure because you aren’t at the tippy, tippy top?  Making success about being the best in your field is bound to lead to disappointment, because even if you’re the president of your country, there will be another world leader who is more accomplished and more popular with the people. 

Another definition says that you are successful if lots of other people think and/or tell you that you are.  Except how do you decide whose opinion counts, and whose doesn’t?  Are the people in your life really equipped to make an objective judgment about such things?  Plus, it’s always dangerous to base your self-esteem on what other people think.  Then there’s the people who say that you’re successful if you’ve gotten rich doing what you do.  This makes a degree of sense, although if your windfall was mostly luck or being in the right place at the right time, of if your wealthy in laws loaned you the money to get a leg up, how successful are you really?

For me, I think success is enjoying your work enough so that you’re energized at the start of each business day.  It’s having the respect and admiration of your colleagues.  It’s earning enough so that you’re in a position to pursue the lifestyle you want, with enough time to spend with the people who are most important to you.  It’s making a contribution to society so that you know in your heart that the world is a better place with you in it. 

What do you think?