We live in a culture obsessed with success. Grant Cardone, a popular press guru and author of The 10X Rule, says that “success is your duty, obligation, and responsibility.”1 That’s quite a manifesto and mandate not to mention a lot of pressure in a world where we are constantly bombarded with the daily necessities of living such as work, family, health, friends, and endless to-do lists. Even so, we hear about success all the time.
I can’t count the number of times that I’ve been in a conversation where the other person says, ‘[s]he’s been very successful.’ My friend, John, once said this exact line to me as he described the husband of his college friend. The couple was fairly wealthy, had two kids, a vacation home, the wife was a homemaker, and the husband had risen up pretty high at a major consulting firm, earning over $1 million a year. Most people would say that Jeff Bezos, Oprah Winfrey, and Tim Cook are also very successful. At first glance, this makes success look like it is accomplished through career or wealth. This would make sense given that the average person spends 90,000 hours or one-third of their life working and earning a wage.2 However, when John described the accomplishments of his classmate’s spouse he included a lot of other details which he attributed to this portrait of success.
Reflecting on this story, I began to ask myself a few questions. What does success really mean? For those who are analytical, how does one measure their success? How would someone know if they are in fact successful? At first glance, these look like simple questions. I did some Googling and couldn’t find any concrete answers. With all of the self-help books, blogs, and studies done on success, surely there must be a definition of it. Yet, I couldn’t find one single, uniform, or agreed upon definition. In the absence of clarity, I set out on a journey to discover the true meaning of success.
I first went to the most logical place: the dictionary. Merriam-Webster (2023) defines success as the “degree or measure of succeeding” or a “favorable or desired outcome.”3 These are pretty ambiguous definitions and still left me without any solid answers.
I thought to myself, “scholars must have studied this given our cultural obsession and the myriad of self-help books on the topic.” I began to dig a little deeper into the academic literature and found the reason for so much ambiguity surrounding the definition of success. It’s because each person defines success differently based upon individually determined goals, criteria, and values. In one study by Dyke and Murphy (2006), they found that women and men define success differently. For women, success was based on their sense of balance and relationships. Men on the other hand focused largely on material success. The study went on to find that for both men and women their concepts of success impacted their careers.4 This study implies two things more broadly. First, success can mean different things to different people. Second, it can be intertwined with career. This made me wonder about how much a career really is tied to success.
In the book Career Management for Life, the authors explore the interplay between careers and success. They state, “For most individuals, work is a defining aspect of life…our happiness and fulfillment can hinge on how well we are able to control the course of our work lives, and manage the effects of our work on our family and personal life.”5 This reinforces the idea that the outcomes of a career are very much a part of how success is culturally defined. Not only is a career a key element of success, it impacts our overall well-being. This prompts the need to understand what defines career success given its weight and impact.
The Encyclopedia of career development defines career success as “the positive material and psychological outcomes resulting from one’s work activities and experiences.”6 It continues that career success is defined by both objective and subjective goals. These objective career goals can be objectively observed by others and measured whereas subjective career goals reflect one’s personal feelings of satisfaction with their career. In addition, the definition of career success states that the objective and subjective goals by which a person defines career success are unique to each individual.7
In a study done by Hall et al. (2012) on the pursuit of career success, researchers found objective goals included quantifiable accomplishments such as salary and the number of promotions. In the same study, they found that people consider subjective career goals to include one’s assessment of their family life, personal life, overall career satisfaction, and career trajectory. They also found that individuals may also base their career success based upon eight organizational themes including upward mobility, peer respect, organizational or supervisory recognition or appreciation, having a life outside of work, being challenged or continuing to learn and grow professionally, enjoying work, performing well, and having an impact.8 This is where it becomes interesting. When looking at the subjective themes, career success ties back to factors outside of work as well as personal fulfillment through enjoyment and growth. These findings suggest a broader definition of success. While career success is a large part of how success is measured, it is also measured by uniquely defined qualitative goals that extend beyond a person’s career. This is consistent with the definition of career success found earlier in the Encyclopedia of career development.
These findings of objective and subjective career success, their symbiotic relationship, and their broader reach which incorporates external goals are consistent with other findings in the academic journals. In one article, Direnzo et al. (2015) noted that career decisions should be made from a “whole-life perspective” which is define as:
…the extent to which an individual (i) seeks effectiveness and satisfaction in multiple life roles rather than solely in the work role and (ii) makes career decisions with an awareness of their impact on other aspects of one’s life. According to this view, an individual who adopts a whole-life perspective desires balance among different parts of life and understands the consequences of career decision making for achieving balance.9
If career success is an outcome based on career decisions that are made from a “whole-life perspective,” then one can extrapolate that success really is measured from a “whole-life perspective.” Therefore, success incorporates the combination of career and life goals, both objective and subjective, that are uniquely defined by each person.
When a person uniquely defines their success, something interesting happens: there is a compounding effect similar to the way that compounding interest works. A study done by Zhou et al. (2016) found that when someone makes a decision based on their goals, they experience greater self-efficacy in achieving those goals.10 In another study by Abele and Spurk (2009), they found that “[s]ubjectively successful professionals become objectively more successful, and this is advantageous for…the individual…”11 In other words, success begets more success. The sky and beyond are the limit if that’s where you want to go.
In short, success is uniquely defined by each person rather than by friends, family, co-workers, peers, the media, or society as a whole. It may include career success which can be measured by quantifiable factors like money and job title as well as qualitative factors including work-life balance, intrinsic benefits, and the outcomes experienced by a person. Furthermore, success isn’t just measured by your career. It’s also measured by the sum total of your life experience and legacy. Perhaps it’s achieving a doctorate, having a family, traveling the world, starting a business, or driving societal change for the benefit of others. Maybe it’s all of things or none of them. The point is this: success is yours to define and achieve for yourself and no one else. It’s only a “duty, obligation, and responsibility”12 in so much as you want it to be and is irrespective of others’ success. With this in mind, we can all be empowered to be successful.
Sources:
- Cardone, G. (2011). The 10x rule: the only difference between success and failure (1st edition)
John Wiley & Sons. Available from Audible. ↩︎ - Naber, A. (2022). Tan, M. How Many Years Do You Spend Working In Your Lifetime? Medium, Illumination. Retrieved from https://medium.com/illumination/how-many-years-do-you-spend-working-in-your-lifetime-f5bfd4c7e5f0. ↩︎
- Merriam-Webster. (n.d). Success. In Merriam-Webster dictionary. Retrieved October 9,2023, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/success. ↩︎
- Dyke, & Murphy, S. A. (2006). How we define success : A qualitative study of what matters most to women and men. Sex Roles, 55(5-6), 357–371. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-006-9091-2. ↩︎
- Greenhaus, J. H., Callanan, G. A., & Godshalk, V. M. (2018). Career Management for Life, 5th edition. Routledge. ↩︎
- Seibert, S. E. (2006). (Callanan, & Greenhaus, J. H. (Eds.). Career Success. Encyclopedia of career development. (pp. 148 – 154). Sage Publications. ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎
- Hall, D., Lee, M. D., Kossek, E. E., & Heras, M. L. (2012). Pursuing Career Success while Sustaining Personal and Family Well-Being: A Study of Reduced-Load Professionals over Time. Journal of Social Issues, 68(4), 742–766.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.2012.01774.x.
↩︎ - Direnzo, Greenhaus, J., & Weer, C. H. (2015). Relationship between protean career orientation and work-life balance: A resource perspective. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 36(4), 538–560. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.1996. ↩︎
- Zhou, G, Y., Xin, L., Mak, M. C. K., & Deng, Y. (2016). Career success criteria and locus of control as indicators of adaptive readiness in the career adaptation model. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 94, 124–130. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2016.02.015. ↩︎
- Abele, & Spurk, D. (2009). How do objective and subjective career success interrelate over time? Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 82(4), 803–824. https://doi.org/10.1348/096317909X470924. ↩︎
- Cardone (n 1). ↩︎
