We measure success either in numbers because our brain understands quantity more easily than abstract emotions or in terms of the next thing we are going to pursue. It is always a forward movement that gets associated with success.
I have never felt particularly successful in life. I can pin-point so many instances where I have felt like a failure but not one where I felt I had achieved something significant.
But in a conversation with myself – because I have to talk to intelligent people from time to time and I am a writer so obviously I am crazy – my intelligent self told my not so intelligent self that I had been looking at success as a pyramid, a ladder that needed to be climbed, a hurdle that needed to be overcome. To what end did I need to overcome the hurdle is another matter entirely but the problem was in the construction of the triangle and the inherent need of prioritizing one aspect of life over another to define success.
And then my intelligent self said,
“What if success was a pie and you could divide it and define it the way you want?”
Once I had gotten over the mouthwatering image of a pie, suddenly the message clicked and it was like the sun was rising again.
Now a pie is a more democratic way of looking at how you define success. It ceases to be a race, a hurdle, a climb, a something you have to do to reach the next something you have to do and the cycle just keeps going and going and going.
From finding a very narrow approach to defining success (career, money, other numbers), I now had an approach that allowed me to put everything in the pie without having to justify to that primal, survival, lizard brain of mine that “a good meal” and a “meaningful career” deserved to be on the same plate.
This revelation took some time to solidify in my head and then solidify enough to write a blog post on it but I opened a PPT (like I haven’t been making enough of those but oh well) went to smart art to draw a pie chart, fill it with details and choose my colours. Apart from it being a fun exercise, it helped me feel something I hadn’t thought I needed feeling where it came to answering the question am I successful – a sense of calm.
Here’s my success pie:
What would your chart contain?
And as synchronicity – universe – would have it, I found this lovely Ted Talk by Alain de Botton on defining a gentler form of success. My favourite part of the talk was:
“Not that we should give upon our ideas of success, but we should make sure that they are our own. Because it’s bad enough not getting what you want, but it’s even worse to have an idea of what it is you want, and find out, at the end of the journey, that it isn’t, in fact, what you wanted all along.”
tales of Suchita 
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