How Are You Measuring Success?
Measuring Success Via Comparison Only Is A Strategy For Misery
Adapted from Scott Shute via his article on Fast Company.
Men are taught from an early age that success is imperative and that your manhood is likely to be questioned if you are not successful. So, we grow up from an early age looking for ways to demonstrate that we will be or already are successful. However, as Scott points out in his article, often times our environment has taught us to measure success in a very narrow way, and most of the time it is purely a proxy for how others view us - it is related to status, position, and relative rank. Scott offers three tips for re-assessing how you measure success, which are focused on developing a more internally validating approach. Now, it would be easy to read Scott’s article and assume that he means that all internal sources of validation are wrong - that is not the case. External validations have been and will continue to be important, but they should not be the end-all-be-all. What psychology teaches us is that your foundation of defining success should be related to internal validation and that we should use external sources intermittently to motivate and reinforce ourselves. Check out three tips Scott offers and see if there is an area where you can make a change.
Reconsider Seeking Frequent External Validation
In the era of smartphones and social media, we live in an environment that offers constant feedback, both good and bad. Many people’s days are filled with digital likes, follows, and comments. Because of this proliferation, we crave constant feedback in other areas of life as well, including work. However, this can create a slippery slope where our main focus becomes avoiding negative feedback as opposed to purely doing good work.
Happiness is an inside job. It’s not to say we don’t care what others think. We do. But our true happiness, true freedom, comes when we focus on ourselves, on our own journey. Instead of looking to the outside, we develop inner strength. We have self-compassion.
So, be intentional about when you seek external validation. Ensure that you are not doing so purely to find happiness or define your self-worth. External feedback can help guide us as we move along our path to achieving our goals and having a growth mindset…but there is more utility in being able to evaluate your own work and praise the effort you put in day-in-and-day-out.
Avoid Overidentifying With Your Career
Think about the last conversation you had with someone you just met and didn’t know much about. Our guess is that one of the first things, if not the first thing, you asked them was what they did for a living - or that is one of the first things they asked you. Again, work is an important part of our lives, as we spend a large chunk of our time doing it. But, there is some utility in ensuring that your entire identity and self-worth don’t come from one source.
On our death beds, we won’t wish we’d focused more on work. Ultimately we will measure our success by the quality of our relationships. What we wouldn’t give to have just one more day with the people we love? Yes, we still work. Yes, it’s still important. But don’t confused net worth with self-worth. Realize that relationships and connection make us happier than status alone.
The takeaway is that having a uni-dimensional identity is a slippery slope. Sure, being goal-directed and successful means that there is likely to be an identity, such as your professional identity, that is the biggest piece of the pie in terms of who you are. However, balance is everything and sometimes less is more - being well-rounded is likely to lead to greater success. Think about it much like your portfolio. Putting all of your assets into one area may pay dividends when things are going well, but you are exposed and not protected when things are less optimal.
Be Careful Comparing Yourself To Others
Social comparison is part of the human experience. It allows us to make judgments about our own abilities and adjust as necessary. However, much like validation, it can become problematic if your foundation is social comparison. Instead, that foundation should be self-comparison - are you experiencing continuous improvement….are you better than you were last month…last year….five years ago?
On race day there’s a strategy. You know not to start out too fast. You find the pace group that wil run nine-minute miles and you settle in. By the 18th mile, you’ll know if you can go any faster of if you will just be hanging on. It hurts, but it feels good at the same time……..You’ve done evertyhing you could do. As you cross the finish line and throw your hand sin the air, you know that you’ve completely maxed out your capability. There was nothing more you could have done. You smile a giant smile as you hold your finishers’ medal and bask in the endorphins. In that precious moment, does it really matter that your friend David finished 12 minutes ahead of you? No. You ran your own race. And you won.
This is the measure of having a growth mindset - you are embracing challenges, persisting in the face of setbacks, focusing on the process, learning from experiences, and finishing lessons and inspiration in the success of others. And while you might look to other people for inspiration, you are comparing yourself to your own standards, your own performance, your own relative growth. Because at the end of the day, that is all that is in your control, and that is all that often matters.