I consider myself incredibly unsuccessful.

No, I’m not being hard on myself or self-deprecating, but I genuinely do think I’m an unsuccessful person right now.

From the outside, it may look like I have tons of great things going for me:
– I run my own business
– I have a gorgeous home
– I am travelling the world frequently
– I have a supportive partner and an extremely cute dog
– My parents are still alive and are amazing people

To many, they’d be like “OK that’s a successful life”, and would think I’m being incredibly ungrateful right now.

So let me tell you this….

I LOVE my life. I am INSANELY grateful for all of the above and every day I think I’m so incredibly lucky that I have all that going for me.

So why on earth do I think I’m so unsuccessful?

Well, that’s because of how I define success.

Now don’t get me wrong, on some level, I’m successful. And at one stage, I probably did consider myself successful.

But not now. My goalposts have moved.

So, let’s first look at the dictionary’s definition of success:

“The favourable or prosperous termination of attempts or endeavours; the accomplishment of one’s goals.”

I think the key part of this definition is where it says “one’s goals”.

That means, success is defined based on your own goals.

My life goal is to have the ultimate freedom – to not have to work and to just spend my day however I like.

I sometimes define success as “never having to set an alarm”.

Because I can choose when I want to wake up.

Right now, an alarm goes off each morning and I have to work, if I want to be able to pay my bills and to eat.

So, this is why I believe I’m incredibly unsuccessful.

But at some point, my only goal in life was to own my own home, so when I moved in here, I considered myself the most successful person in the world.

I still love this home and I actually have no ambitions of trying to get a bigger home. My only goal at the moment is to have more time for myself to spend it on things that I really want to do.

I was on a call the other day and found myself really disagreeing with someone on the call who considered themselves to be a “high performance coach”.

They had this huge tendency to just encourage people to do MORE. To constantly look for MORE. That what they were doing was not enough.

But the MORE always related to money.

It was always about how to make more money and look more “successful”.

Because to many people, success = money.

So, I just read one definition of success, that I found on dictionary.com. But there’s more than one definition.

The one I read was the first one and so it made sense for me to refer to that.

But this is the second one in the list:

“The attainment of wealth, position, honours, or the like.”

THIS is most people’s definition of success. It usually has to do with fame and fortune.

Now, in the definition’s defence, it does say “the like”. So, it keeps it broad enough that it could refer to different things.

But why do I care how people define success and whether people want more money or to be famous?

Because this is what leads to more stress, dissatisfaction and inevitably, burnout.

There have been so many cases of entrepreneurs constantly chasing the goal of insane growth or money and have caused themselves harm.

It was actually due to last week’s episode on the Speed & Growth BS that led me to create this episode. Do give that a listen too, and let me know what you think.

So I want to give you an example of someone who worked his butt off to be incredibly successful, but was actually super depressed as a result.

Justin Kan was the co-founder of Twitch. He started it as Justin.tv back in 2007 where he essentially just broadcasted his life 24/7.

It actually became rather popular, but they faced several technical difficulties and so Kan observed the rise in popularity in gaming and pivoted the business, focusing on the gaming industry, thereby launching Twitch in 2011.

By 2014, he had sold Twitch to Amazon for $970 million!!

So, this sounds like the biggest success story ever!

However, during what should have been the happiest times, celebrating his successes, Kan experienced depression. He was struggling with finding fulfilment and purpose despite his huge financial success.

Kan spoke about how he felt empty, despite all the accolades and financial security and began to bring more awareness of mental health.

Justin now has a YouTube channel and a podcast where he regularly opens up about these difficult topics and is a great advocate for men’s mental health issues and has realised there’s a lot more to life than just money and fame.

And Justin isn’t the only famous entrepreneurial story like this.

Take Arianna Huffington.

In 2005, Arianna co-founded The Huffington Post, an online news site, which quickly grew into one of the biggest and most influential news sites in the world.

It even won a Pullitzer Prize for national reporting!

However, in 2007, Arianna collapsed at her desk from exhaustion. She broke her cheekbone and needed stiches.

This was a real wake-up call in how she was running her life and putting too much into the business. She completely re-evaluated her definition of success and recognised that despite her professional achievements, she was neglecting her health and well-being.

So, in 2016, Arianna Huffington founded Thrive Global, which started off just as a platform to combat stress and burnout by providing science-based solutions to improve wellbeing.

It offered a ton of digital content like the Huffington Post, but also offered workshops and seminars.

Now, it’s an all-in-one productivity and health platform that can integrate with things like Teams and Slack and helps improve employee wellbeing.

Moreover, Huffington is now a real advocate for better work life balance, mental health awareness, the importance of sleep and self-care.

This incident has caused her to shift her whole life to dedicating her time to promoting these values both personally and professionally.

And there are plenty of other people like Huffington and Kan who have had similar experiences, but they may not necessarily be in the limelight as much as these two.

If you listen or watch my other podcast, No Bullsh*t Talks, you will know that plenty of my guests have faced burnout and they regretted being so obsessed with money and growth and wished they’d focused on something more meaningful.

So, how can you redefine success?

Well, perhaps have a more holistic view on what success is, one that includes personal happiness, health, relationships and personal growth.

You also want to make sure that you align your definition of success with personal values and passions.

So, take my definition of success from the beginning of this episode. I only talked about what I imagined my life would be like.

But this would be because of the following:

– I had made a difference in the world and already helped thousands of people
– I made enough money from doing something fulfilling that I didn’t feel like something was missing.
– I felt free to just learn whatever I wanted each day.

This is because I believe there are several categories of personal success:
• Personal Fulfilment: Finding joy and satisfaction in what you do.
• Health and Well-being: Prioritising physical and mental health.
• Relationships: Valuing and nurturing relationships with family, friends, and colleagues.
• Impact and Legacy: Making a positive impact on others and leaving a meaningful legacy.
• Continuous Learning: Valuing personal growth and lifelong learning.
There are plenty of people out there who define success in a different way and it doesn’t make them any less wealthy either!

For example, take Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia. He’s always been someone who has put purpose over profit.

They have been giving away a portion of their profits to environmental causes and they use sustainable material for their clothes.

They have marketing campaigns that actively tell you NOT to buy their clothes!

Chouinard measures the success of his company by their positive impact on the environment.

In fact, a couple of years ago, he signed away his company to a trust! The Patagonia Purpose Trust now holds 100% of the voting stock of Patagonia, ensuring that the company’s mission remains intact. The Holdfast Collective, a nonprofit, receives all the company’s profits not reinvested in the business, which are used to address climate change and protect the environment.

This attitude is incredible and I know that he’s one of a kind, but there are people out there who believe there’s more to life than money.

So, what steps will you be taking to define what success means to you?

Well, some serious self-reflection is going to be required. There are plenty of ways of doing this, so you can pick whatever feels right for you. But self-reflection is one of the most powerful exercises you can do.

You can journal, mind map or even just write out what your ideal life would look like. This will help you define what success is to you.

You see how I started off by talking to you about what my ideal life looked like? It wasn’t about what house I was in, what car I was driving or even what things I had. But it was the quality of my life.

I still have some work to do on my definition, as I know the destination, but I’d like to have a few stops on the way. So, I will probably have to re-listen to my own goal-setting BS episode on how to set proper goals and achieve this.

If you’ve listened to the episode already, you will know that I’m not a fan of SMART goals and there are some flaws in them.

But however you choose to self-reflect, find out what a balanced life looks like to you and see if you can work out what success looks like before mapping your journey towards it.

Today’s episode really complements last week’s episode on Speed & Growth BS, but also the Happiness BS too.

This episode was also because of the discussions sparked from the previous episode. So, please feel free to get in touch with any questions or comments and I will be happy to do an episode on a topic you’d like to hear about.

That’s it for now, so until next time; keep sniffing out the bullsh*t.