#4: It's Time to Redefine Success
It’s time to redefine success by identifying what success looks like to you. What does success mean to you, and what does it look like to you?
A lot of the times, we get caught up in what everyone else is doing and what everyone else wants, and then we end up wanting what everyone else wants. At the end of the day, we may find we're trying to go after that and achieve that, only to realize that actually that's not what we really want. Has that happened to you before? I've seen it for myself. I've seen it with clients. It is definitely something that shows up a lot in our society as a whole.
What I want to talk about today is how you can reset this for yourself, and how you can take a look and redefine what success means to you, so that you can come to a different outcome for yourself. Nobody should be feeling like they're on a hamster wheel, kind of going and going and going and not really knowing where they're ending up or striving for something that they don't really want.
This episode is here to help you start thinking about what success looks like to you.
Who do you want to be in your life?
Where do you want to be?
Human Design as a Tool to Redefine Success
I use a few different tools with clients in terms of modalities around redefining success. I love human design as a tool because it shows you so much about your energy and how you are meant to move about the world. It can be a very, very powerful tool, if you use it for yourself in the right way, and don't make it become something that keeps you stuck where you are. If you're not familiar with human design, there are places where you can get a free chart and start exploring it. There is a link at the bottom of this article where you can get a free chart.
Human Design shares a Signature Theme for each of the energy types in terms of how they will know if they are in alignment. Projectors, for example, will feel success. Manifestors will feel peace. Generators will feel satisfaction. Manifesting Generators will feel a combination of peace and satisfaction. Reflectors will feel excitement and delight. If you know your energy type then you can also feel into your corresponding signature theme.
If you choose to go down the rabbit hole with human design and you end up wanting a reading, you can take a look on my website for that.
How Self Awareness Relates to Redefining Success
When you want to redefine success there is an element of self awareness that is present. You won’t be able to know what success means to you without knowing who you are and what you want. You really have to take a look at the different parts of your life, what's working, what's not working, and where do you really want to be?
For me, for a long time, especially when I was building Brief Transitions, I was pushing and pushing and trying to build this empire of a product based business. Don't get me wrong, there were things that I loved about it, but over time, I also came to realize this really isn't actually where I feel best and what I feel best doing. I was really in the details and in the grind of building a product business. I loved and I still love, Sarah Blakely, founder of Spanx, and she was such an inspiration to me in a lot of ways. And yes I also found that the more I was trying grow it and expand the business over time, it eventually didn't feel in alignment with me anymore, energetically. Probably because the type of work that I was doing did not feel good to me over time. I was exhausted. I don't even know what to say for going into the details of how it wasn't working for me, but it just didn't feel right anymore. A lot of the things that I had to do on a day to day basis did not bring me joy. Then, my family moved to France, so it felt even more like not a fit for who I was and where I was going in my life. I eventually closed it.
All of that helped me to realize and recognize that this isn't actually how I want to spend my days. This isn't the type of work that I want to be doing, but I was holding on to it for a long time because I was scared to let go and do something else. In the end, what I really found over time for myself was that actually, I'm here to be a guide. I'm here to support other people on their journey, and I'm here to reflect back and share tools and resources in different ways that can help them change something in their life.
Over time, I found my way. Had it been earlier, and had I heard an episode like this, which is perhaps some of the inspiration for this episode, it probably would have helped me come to some conclusions faster.
Some questions you can ask yourself include:
What does success actually look like for you?
What do you want it to be?
What how do you want to be spending your days?
How do you want to be showing up?
How do your relationships look?
Where are you spending your quality time?
Who are you spending it with?
What are the things that you dream about doing?
What are the things that you would love to accomplish in your life?
All of these different things add up and go into the fold of what success looks like for you and how you redefine success. If you don't know what you want it to look like, you'll just keep spinning on the hamster wheel. Hopefully, to avoid that for yourself, you can take a look and reflect on where are you, what's working, what's not working, and where do you want to go from here.
Not all of them have to be big front and center things around a certain type of job, or your family looking a certain way, or anything like that. It could even be the things that you love to do that you want to have time for creatively. Not every creative thing that you do has to be a business. It can also be a hobby. Maybe you love to paint or draw or play an instrument and when you do that, you have a feeling of success or satisfaction or even peace.
Money and How You Redefine Success
Success doesn't only have to be about making money from something. It can also be part of how you want to spend your days. Creativity is a whole other thing that, as a society, we suppress a lot of the time. We don't allow it to come forward, and it really should be a lot more normalized in society as part of how we live life, because we are creative beings to begin with. But I digress, that's probably for another episode. In this episode, we're talking about what success looks like.
Success doesn't necessarily have to mean a dollar value. You can have a dollar value to it, of course, if there's a certain safety net that you want to have, or a certain achievement in terms of buying a home, for example. It can also be for those other parts of yourself that are around how you are being and how you are showing up in your life.
You have this life. You want to make the moments count. You want to feel things from them and feel great about yourself and what you're doing and how you show up in the world, and all of that is tied to also what your version of success looks like for you. There's so much more to success than just the financials. Yes, I want to have certain financials that support a certain lifestyle for myself. My family lives on another continent. I want to be able to go back and forth to see them and be able to afford those trips, for example. And it's really important for me to have time and space in my day. It's important for me to be able to pick up my daughter from the bus for as long as she wants me to. All of these things are part of what I want to see in my day, that are part of what I feel success looks like for me.
For you, what is your version of success?
Reflection Activity to Redefine Success
I wanted to share that with you today and invite you to reflect on that and really ask yourself, what does success look like for you. You can take a look and take a quick pulse in terms of where you are right now and what success looks like to you. Where are you on that scale right now? Are you pretty close to it? Do you already feel successful with how you are showing up in your life and where you are, or are there things that you would like to change or tweak in some way?
Your homework for today is to reflect on the following questions:
What does success look like to you?
What does it feel like?
What is the vision that you have for yourself?
It is better if you don’t make this an activity of your mind. Journal on these questions to see what comes up for you without thinking about it. It is in those reflections that you’ll be able to see hidden messages and themes that may be holding you back from your own version of success.
Conclusion on How to Redefine Success
There is no right or wrong, and you're at where you're at. So don't spiral down a shame spiral or anything by overthinking and beating yourself up. Do not use this as an excuse or a reason to then beat yourself up. Use it as a way to reflect and potentially find some inspiration for taking your next step. All right. So really taking a look at it and identifying and dreaming into the space of what does success look like to you. And then you can figure out ways, and you can start to explore how you want to make the small tweaks over time, how you want to implement different things in your life to be able to achieve that vision and that version of yourself in your world. So that's what I have for you today on how to redefine success for yourself.
Resources mentioned:
Get your free Human Design chart here.
If you’d like to connect further about unlocking the next step in your personal development journey, please feel free to reach out. I'm on LinkedIn and Instagram. I'm also on Voxer at @MaryClavieres.
If you want support with where you are right now, I'd be honored to work with you. You’re invited to check out my Human Design readings so that you can learn more about your own energy and how you operate. This tool is a powerful building block that will allow you to live life with less stress and more peace.
Join my upcoming How to Make Better Decisions in 2025 workshop.
Check out Finding Yourself Again – Mary’s story HERE.
Check out The First Step to Change the Course of Your Life HERE.
Check out The Easiest Way to Practice Gratitude in One Minute a Day HERE.
