Module 4 · Meaning, purpose & a good life · Lesson 5 of 6

What does success mean — and who decides?

Definitions of success are borrowed, inherited and revised. You can write your own.

8 min read · Free — no account needed to read

The idea

Everyone carries a definition of success, usually without having chosen it. It may come from parents, school, culture, social media or the people around you: a certain salary, title, house, marriage, number of followers. These definitions are powerful because they are rarely examined.

Who decides what a successful life looks like? In practice, often other people — and their definitions are not wrong, just not automatically yours. Some borrowed ideas of success fit you well once examined; others quietly push you toward a life you would not choose.

Definitions of success also change. Many people find that what counted as success at twenty-five — speed, status, money — looks different at forty or sixty, when health, relationships and time move up the list. Revising your definition is not lowering your standards; it is updating them.

Why it matters

If you pursue someone else’s definition of success, reaching it can feel oddly empty, and missing it can feel like a verdict on your worth. Writing your own definition gives you a standard you actually care about meeting.

See it happen

Anjali earns well as a corporate lawyer, owns a flat and is admired by her extended family. She feels successful on paper and tired in life.

The first read

She has achieved everything she aimed for, so she concludes the tiredness must be her own fault and she should simply appreciate what she has.

With this idea

She writes her own definition of success: time with the people she loves, work she believes in, health. Measured this way she is only partly successful. She negotiates a four-day week and starts doing pro bono work she cares about.

What changed

She measured her life against a definition she chose, not only the one she had absorbed.

Easy to get wrong

• Rejecting every conventional idea of success on principle. Security, recognition and money can be genuine parts of a good life.
• Writing a definition once and never looking at it again. It is meant to change as you do.

Different perspectives

Reasonable people disagree here. None of these is presented as the final word.

Success is measurable achievement

Many people find clear outward markers — income, qualifications, promotions — motivating and fair, and they can reflect real effort and skill.

Success is how well you live

A long line of thinkers, from Aristotle onward, argue a successful life is measured by the quality of how you live and treat others, not by possessions or status.

What this rests on

A question to think about. People have argued about this for centuries. There is no single answer — only better questions.

• Daniel Gilbert — Stumbling on Happiness (2006) — Research on affective forecasting: people are often wrong about how much, and for how long, a future event will make them happy or unhappy.
• Aristotle — Nicomachean Ethics (c. 340 BCE) — Argues that a good life (eudaimonia, often translated flourishing) comes from living and acting well over a whole life, not from pleasure alone.

Try it: Write your own definition

1. Write the definition of success you grew up with, in one sentence.
2. Write where it came from.
3. Now write your own definition, in one or two sentences, for this stage of your life.

Reflect

• Whose definition of success are you currently living by?
• How has your idea of success changed over the last ten years?

Use it in the coming days

Put your own definition of success on your Vision Board this week, and look at one decision you are facing through it.

Where to do it: My Vision Board

Your definition of success belongs where you keep the picture of the life you are building.