Less stress, more success
How can you be successful if you don’t know what success means to you?
BEFORE YOU READ!
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Oh, and yes, as any Leaving Cert students from the late 90s to now will know, I stole the title of this piece from the famous (infamous?) revision book series. I’m sure my lawyers (!) will be hearing from them.
Confession time.
There’s someone I consider to be a dear, dear friend now that I was convinced I didn’t like for years. Years. I spent so long with a floating but reliable knowingness that I ‘didn’t like’ them. Based on what? I didn’t know. But I was steadfast in my belief.
Fast forward a few years, and we are now very close friends. I have never told her this.
She’ll probably read this piece and know it’s her I’m talking about. And I’m happy for her to. Because after MUCH introspection and self-examination, I realised why I thought I didn’t like her.
I was jealous.
Yes indeedy; our mothers’ much-trotted out “she’s just jealous!” trope was TRUE after all. I was just good old-fashioned, green-eyed monstering. Envy was at the core of what I felt about her. I had constructed a dislike based on nothing but my own insecurity.
She was (is!) incredibly beautiful, intelligent, universally well-liked, a talented writer. She won awards and got opportunities I would’ve loved. She had many things in her personal life that at the time I coveted. She was, to me, the very definition of success. She was everything I felt I wasn’t.
It took me a while to realise it, and once I did – I was free. I immediately realised I didn’t dislike her at all, and the dislike was completely irrational and based on nothing. I found that, in fact, I really liked her. Jealously became admiration, and suddenly I just thought she was brilliant.
Over the course of time, we became acquaintances, then casual pals, then better pals and now – I would like to think – we are very close friends who talk almost daily. To think I almost sabotaged a valued, cherished relationship because of my own self-esteem? I shudder at the thought.
I say all this because – as described – this person was (is!), to me, the definition of success. But success looks different to everyone. In what could be considered a follow-up piece to my previous one about pulling the ladder up, this one is all about what success might look like for each individual. This piece came to be, as it often does, after a passing chat with my good friend and idea-generation machine Liadán Hynes.
We were exchanging lengthy whatsapp voice notes the other day. I was in full flow, about six minutes into a voicey marathon where we were discussing my last piece. Lia is one of those people who I could listen to talk on any subject, for any amount of time and never be bored. Thankfully she indulges me and my podcast-length VMs occasionally too.
I remarked that ‘Isabel’ (if you haven’t read it, go back!) was rude to me and was pulling the ladder up based on the scarcity mindset that surrounds sudden huge success. As I said it, I had an ‘aha’ moment. I realised that success, to me, would be defined by the impression (both fleeting and lasting) that I left on people. I would be happier with everyone I met finding me to be a good, honest and kind person than if I had 20,000 Substack subscribers or a €200K salary. And by that definition, MY definition, she wasn’t very successful at all.
Success is often painted in broad strokes. Billionaires covering TIME Magazine. Those (abhorrent and ageist) 30-under-30 lists. The Sunday Times’ Rich List. Awards ceremonies where titans of a particular industry gather to pat each others’ backs aggressively yet begrudgingly. Wealth, profile and career status are the typical things one might associate with success – something that, I think, makes it sound like a dirty word. In the same way that describing someone as ‘ambitious’ paints a picture, so too does someone declaring themselves or someone else as ‘successful’.
To me, success isn’t a broad strokes affair. It’s very much a carefully and thoughtfully crafted mosaic of smaller moments, zoomed out to reveal a successful big picture but not immediately reading as such when seeing its shards individually.
To figure out my own governing principles for success, I used the framework below – four easy steps. Once my personal curation was complete, I felt not only more successful, but also more content and more grateful for what I have. Green-eyed monster → back from whence you came, TYVM.
Proceed with the opposite of caution: Dream big, success is easier than you think.