Your Definition of Success is Stifling your Success

“How are you doing?”

How many times a day do you get asked that question? If you’re like most, you get asked this question multiple times in a day by everyone from your significant other to your employer to your neighbor.

“Good” or “great” or “phenomenal” might be your response.“Bad” or “sad” or “hurt” might also be your response.

What is your mechanism with which you measure how you are doing? What determines if you’re having a “good” day or a “great” day or a “phenomenal” day?

Would it be the tasks that you got done or left undone?

Would it be the podcasts that you listened to?

Would it be the emotions that you felt? Would those emotions be determined by something outside of you (whether or not you achieved an outcome you expected).

What determines a successful day, month, year, or life?

It will be your actual definition of success. Most have a warped definition of success when it comes to their days, months, years, and life.

They work and work and work trying to achieve a specific outcome that they have in their heads of “success.”

If you were go around and ask people what their definition of “success” would be, you’d get lots of different answers; however, you would find one major theme throughout: the achievement of a desired outcome.

The desired outcome in school is high grades and graduate with honors.

The desired outcome in athletics is superior performance, winning games and achieving championships.

The desired outcome in business is a million dollar enterprise, lots of sales, and happy employees.

In our culture, we’ve been conditioned to believe that a “win” of a game or a “grade” on a test or class means success. Anything short would mean the opposite of success—failure.

If “achievement of a desired outcome” is the main definition of success for most, then by default the definition of failure would be the opposite—“I didn’t achieve the desired outcome.”

In most people’s minds, if they don’t get the best grades, win the games and championships, and build the million dollar enterprises, then they failed. In essence, if they weren’t perfect, then they failed.

These definitions of success and failure will cripple you.

We tend to look at those at the top of mountain—our celebrities, professional athletes, and influencers—and believe that they magically got there. That they stand on these mountains because of their talents, beauty, or charisma. What most don’t see is the mountain of mistakes they’re standing on.

If you want to achieve levels unheard of in your life, you will have to be willing to make mistakes. You will not be perfect in your pursuit of greatness. In order to go places you’ve never gone, you will have to do things you’ve never done. It all begins by redefining success and failure in your life.

SUCCESS

The best definition of success I’ve ever heard comes from a guy in the 1950s named Earl Nightingale. He produced one of the best spoken audios called “The Strangest Secret” and shared his definition in that audio.

Success—The progressive realization of a worthy ideal.

What is a worthy ideal?

A dream, a vision, and something that completely seems impossible to you right now. The reason why I believe this is the best definition is because it does not include “outcome” in the definition. Instead, it includes “progressive realization.”

Are you progressing towards a dream? Then you are succeeding! It’s that simple.

If progression towards a dream is success, then what is failure?

FAILURE

A few years ago, Sarah Blakely (founder of Spanx) was asked the secret to her years of success—the secret from going from $5,000 in her savings account to creating a billion dollar enterprise. She paused for a moment and shared an experience from her childhood. She remembered sitting around the dinner table as a child and being asked by her father what her “failure of the week” was. If they didn’t bring something to the table, then dad was genuinely disappointed.

They would celebrate each time they tried out for a play and screeched the top note or took the last shot in sports and missed or a myriad of other things. She then gave the greatest definition of failure I’ve ever heard.

“I didn’t realize it at the time,” she shared “but my dad was reframing our definition of failure from ‘outcome’ to ‘simply not trying’.”

Did you catch it?

Failure—simply not trying.

I can promise you this, if you dream big dreams and go after those dreams every day, you are succeeding.

The formula is not “ready, aim, fire.” The formula is “fire, aim, and ready yourself as you go.” Too many wait until the time is perfect to fire their shots and they end up coming to the end of their lives without having fired a shot.

Fire your shots. Every. Single. Day.

The next time someone asks you how your day is going, what will be your measuring stick? My greatest hope is that it will be your progression towards your dreams, being willing to make mistakes, and knowing that you are always on track as long as you don’t quit.