E68 Transcript
Whose Definition of Success Are You Actually Chasing?
Last week we talked about the difference between what you say you value and what your decisions actually reveal. And if you’ve listened to that episode, you may have walked away with at least one slightly uncomfortable question still sitting with you.
This week we're going one step further. Because here's the thing - even if you do the honest work of identifying your values, there is still a question underneath that one that most people never ask. And it's this: the version of success you're working toward right now, the goal you're building your practice around, the definition you're using to measure whether you're making progress or falling behind - where did that come from? Did you choose it? Or is it something that is just there? Was it instilled in you from as far back as you can remember? Is it simply ‘what you’re supposed to do’?
That is what this episode is about. And I'll warn you the same way I did last week - this one may raise a few more questions than it answers. That is deliberate. Let's dive in.
There is a quote attributed to Einstein that I want to use as a starting point here, because I think it reminds us of something worth remembering. He said - and I'm paraphrasing here, but - you cannot solve a problem with the same mind that created it. Now I'm not going to lean on that quote too heavily, because I think the idea I want to talk about today is strong enough to stand on its own. But that phrase points at something true. The thinking (or belief system, or values, or opinions) that got you to your current definition of success may not be the thinking that serves you going forward. And most people never stop to look at that. They just keep driving toward it.
So let's start with a question that sounds simple but isn't. Where did your definition of success come from?
Not what is your definition of success - that's the easier question and most people can answer it quickly, the same way they can answer the values question quickly. The harder question is where did it come from. When did you form it? What were the circumstances at the time? And here is the one underneath all of those: is it still true? Is it still relevant to what YOU want to do? Is it still meaningful for you?
Because most people, if they’ll really examine this, are working from a definition of success that they absorbed rather than chose. It came from family. From watching what got praised and rewarded when you were young. From the culture you grew up in, the industry you trained in, the peer group you measured yourself against at a formative moment. And those sources shaped a picture of what success looks like - what it feels like to have ‘made it,’ what the markers are, what the finish line looks like - and that picture has been running quietly in the background ever since. Directing decisions. Generating guilt when you fall short of it. Producing a hollow feeling even when you reach it.
And here is what makes this especially worth examining for you, a working maker. The definition most of us absorbed was formed under completely different circumstances than the ones we're operating in now. What made sense at twenty two may not make sense at forty five. What your parents valued was shaped by a world that no longer exists in the same form. What success looked like in the industry you trained in may have been disrupted beyond recognition by technology, by market shifts, by the simple fact that you are a different person now than you were when you first formed that picture.
Clinging to an old definition of success because it's the one you've always had is not loyalty to your values. It's inertia. And inertia is one of the most expensive things you can spend on, especially if it’s sending us down the wrong path.
Now I want to get specific about what I mean by absorbed definitions of success, because I think it's easy to nod along with this idea intellectually without actually examining it in your own work.
Think about the makers you know - or think about yourself - who are working extremely hard toward something that, when you press the issue, they can't fully explain why they want it. Not in terms of their actual values. Not in terms of what they genuinely care about. They just know they're supposed to want it. I mean, isn’t that what we’re supposed to do, or want, or care about? The gallery show. The certain level of income. The recognition from a specific community. The body of work that looks a particular way. The career path that follows a particular sequence.
These are not bad goals. I'm not suggesting they're wrong AT ALL. What I'm suggesting is that most people have never stopped to ask whether those goals are genuinely theirs - chosen consciously against a clear set of values - or whether they were inherited from a source that may no longer be applicable.
There is research in psychology on what's known as goal self-concordance – basically are the goal in harmony with self. In layman’s terms, this means - the degree to which the goals you're chasing actually reflect your own values and interests rather than external pressure or absorbed, inherited expectations. And what that research shows consistently is this: people who pursue self-concordant goals - goals they've consciously chosen because they genuinely align with who they are - report significantly higher satisfaction in the process and in the outcome, even when the outcomes are comparable. The work feels different when it comes from a definition that's actually yours. And the work that doesn't feel right, even when it's going well by every external measure, is often going wrong at exactly this level. The definition itself is the problem.
This connects directly to what we talked about last week. If you know what you actually value - not just what you say you value, but what your decisions reveal you've been prioritizing - then you have the raw material to build a definition of success that aligns with those values. But if the definition came first, inherited and unexamined, and the values work comes later, you may discover that you've been executing perfectly toward something that was never actually yours to begin with.
That is an uncomfortable thing to find out. It is also important information.
I mentioned last week that I was downsized from my career in the garment industry. What I didn't tell you was what happened next.
In the aftermath of that, I worked with a Strengths and Positive Psychology coach. I did everything correctly, everything the conventional path said to do. I rewrote the resume. Multiple times. We practiced interview skills. I matched keywords to job descriptions. We identified target companies and tailored applications. I applied, and applied, and applied again. And heard essentially nothing back.
The turning point came when she told me something that she had noticed, underneath my frustration of that process. And it was something I didn't quite have language for at the time. Something felt wrong. Not just about the results - the silence was genuinely discouraging - but about the direction itself. When she turned a bright light on my strengths, what I named as my values and where I felt genuinely happy – we discovered - I didn't actually want what I was working so hard to get.
But here's the thing. I thought that's what success meant. Nine to five. Benefits. A title. A steady paycheck. Security in the form of a corporate structure. That was the definition I had been operating from for a long time. While it served me well for many years, it wasn't one I had consciously chosen at this time in my life. It was one I had absorbed. From the culture I grew up in, from watching what got validated, from a version of the professional world that had shaped my expectations long before I had the clarity to examine them.
And when I was forced to sit with the question - is that definition still true? Does corporate employment still equal what I thought it equaled? - my honest answer was no. The corporate security I had understood in the eighties, nineties even the early aughts, the kind that implied stability and longevity and a reasonable social contract between employer and employee, doesn't exist in the same form now. What I had understood as the safe path had already demonstrated, quite directly and personally, that it wasn't safe any longer. I had been downsized out of it and then Covid all but destroyed it.
So the definition I had been working from wasn't just inherited. It was outdated. It was built on assumptions about how the professional world worked that the professional world had already stopped honoring. And I had almost spent years executing toward it anyway. Because that's what you do when you haven't examined the definition. You just keep going.
What replaced it didn’t arrive quickly or easily. It came out of the values work I described last week - the honest examination of what I actually needed to function well and build something real. And when I mapped my values against a possible definition of success, the picture that emerged looked nothing like the one I'd been chasing. Location independent work. Multiple income streams. A daily creative practice. Control over my own focus. Mentoring people who are serious about their craft. That is what success actually means to me. And every element of it connects directly to a value I can name.
But here is what I want to be clear about. I'm not telling you that story so you'll adopt my definition. Your definition will be different, and it should be. The point is not what success looks like for me. The point is whether your definition is based on your current reality and your actual values - or whether it's a picture you formed somewhere in the past that you've been carrying forward without looking very closely at it.
So let's talk about why this is so hard to do. Let’s face it, if identifying your own definition of success were easy, more people would do it. And most people don't.
I think there are two reasons for that.
The first is that your definition of success is tangled up with your identity in ways that are genuinely difficult to separate. If you have been working toward a particular picture of success for ten or twenty years, questioning that picture doesn't feel like a neutral intellectual exercise. It feels like questioning who you are. It feels like admitting that the direction you've been moving in might have been wrong. And that is uncomfortable enough that most people will do almost anything to avoid it - including continuing to execute toward a goal that isn't working rather than stop and ask why.
The second reason is that inherited definitions of success come with social reinforcement built in. When you pursue the conventional path - whatever that means in your context, your industry, your peer group - you get validation. People understand what you're doing. They’re familiar with the framework for that. They can measure your progress against it and tell you you're doing well. When you step outside that definition and start building toward something that's genuinely your own, that external validation often disappears. And for many people, the loss of that validation is more disorienting than the original discomfort was. So they drift back toward the familiar definition. Not because it serves them. Because it's legible to other people.
Neither of these is a character flaw. They're just patterns worth recognizing. Because once you see them operating, they have less power over the decisions you make today.
So here’s the deal…
Your definition of success should be a living thing. Not fixed at the point when you first formed it. Not inherited wholesale from a source that may no longer be relevant. Not maintained out of loyalty to a version of yourself that has already changed significantly. It should evolve as your circumstances change, as your knowledge deepens, as your values become clearer, as the world you're working in shifts around you.
This is the direct follow-up from last week. Principle one was about knowing what you actually value. Principle two is about making sure the definition of success you're working toward is actually built on those values - not on someone else's picture, not on an assumption that hasn't been examined, not on a version of the world that no longer exists in the same form.
And the question worth sitting with this week is not "am I successful" or even "what is success" although that is equally important to name for yourself. The question is: where did my current definition come from? When did I form it? What were the circumstances? And does it still hold up against what I actually know about myself now?
Because if the answer to that last question is no - or even maybe not - then the most important work you can do right now is not executing harder toward the current goal. It's examining whether the goal itself is the right one.
That is uncomfortable. I know that. Questioning a direction you've been committed to for a long time requires a kind of honesty that doesn't come easily. But the alternative is spending the next ten years getting very good at moving in the wrong direction.
The ten Principles for a Stronger Creative Practice download includes the values and success definition work that goes alongside both of these episodes. It's not a journaling exercise. It's a structured examination. I’ll put the link in the show notes but you can also go to virginialeighstudio.com/learn to get your copy.
Today we talked about where definitions of success actually come from - and why most people are working from a picture they absorbed rather than one they consciously chose. We talked about why those inherited definitions are so hard to examine - because they're tangled up with identity, and because the conventional path comes with social validation that self-determined ones often don't. And we talked about what it actually costs to keep executing toward a definition that was never really yours in the first place.
The question I want you to think about this week is simple but not easy. When did you form your current definition of success? What were the circumstances? And does it still hold up against what you actually value right now?
If it does - good. You have a foundation. Build on it confidently.
If it doesn't - that gap is worth more of your attention than almost anything else you could be working on right now. Not because everything has to change overnight. It doesn't. But because continuing to execute hard toward a definition that isn't yours is one of the quietest ways a maker loses years of work without ever understanding why the progress didn't feel like progress.
That examination takes honesty and it takes time. But it starts with just one question asked seriously. And you've already started asking it.
The ten Principles download in the show notes will walk you through the structured work for both this principle and last week's. It's free and you can get your copy at virginialeighstudio.com/learn. Principle three is next week. I'll see you then.
