Have you succeeded in life?
The only position from which I could answer “yes” unequivocally is six feet underground (or, more likely, as a cloud of gritty ash). After all, what is life’s only viable outcome? Death. So perhaps a better question is,
Have you succeeded in doing what you’ve set out to do so far?
On Wednesday night I went to see a talk by Lauren Bacon of Raised Eyebrow Web Studio about defining success for your small business. The thrust of the talk was moving away from revenue as a success marker and looking more deeply at the reasons you do what you do, in order to define success on your own terms. Her very useful homework assignment (also found in the book she and her business partner Emira Mears wrote, The Boss of You) was to finish the sentence “I will know I am successful when…”, in as many ways as possible.
And so I did.
In doing so, I discovered the one major key to my definition of success that has been missing from my work life and career identity. I want to be paid primarily for my creative output. I will know I’m successful when I am spending 80% of my work time actively engaged in creative production AND can make my target salary. This revelation is not really a surprise, but it is daunting. I have conditioned to deeply believe that creative work cannot pay well. Of course, this isn’t true. Still, conditioning is conditioning, and it will be hard to resist the urge to fall back into a non-creative role that feels comfortable and familiar.
But if I do that, no matter how financially stable and comfortable I am, I will never succeed.
