Success on Your Own Terms

Because chasing someone else’s idea of success will never get you where you need to go

How do you define success outside the noise of society? Beyond the external pressure and silent rules you’re supposed to live by?

It’s easy to think we’re not doing enough. Not growing fast enough. Not being successful enough. Even when you are improving, if you're constantly putting yourself next to incomparable standards—measuring your progress against someone else’s timeline, goals, or lifestyle—you’ll always feel behind. And nothing will ever feel rewarding.

Your real growth starts to feel like a failure. You’ll always be chasing a moving target. One that was never yours to begin with.

It’s been said and overshared, that success looks different for everyone. But I think the parameters of success are still clearly defined. There are in society these barometers that influence us in some way, one way or another.

One thing is knowing those barometers are bullshit, and that we can detach from them. But truly internalizing that truth? Letting yourself be free of them? That’s another story.

At some point in our lives, we all fall under that influence. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it. We carry the weight of those expectations like a shadow that refuses to leave us.

So maybe we need to keep asking ourselves this question. Over and over. Until one day, perhaps, we feel as light as a feather.

Success doesn’t have to be loud or obvious. It can be invisible to others. It can look like simply showing up, again and again, even when things turn sour or difficult or when you don’t feel like it.

So how do we redefine success?

That’s a question, I believe, only you can answer. And it doesn’t need a public response. It shouldn’t be something to prove to anyone else.

To each their own; to each path its own.

We don’t have to explain or justify everything we do. When it comes to success, we should be accountable only to ourselves and to our moral compass, which I hope is well-calibrated.

So, toot your own horn for those small shifts you make, and those small wins you achieve! They build your confidence and your ability to trust yourself, and that, my friend, is what success really demands.