🌱08: How Do You Measure Success?

By results or by impact?

I’ve been mulling over what to write in today’s newsletter for a while, and this nagging question won’t go away.

How Will You Measure Your Life?

How Will You Measure Your Life is a book by Clayton Christensen of blessed memory, James Allworth, and Karen Dillon.

In the book and this TedTalk, Clayton reminds us to not measure our success by aggregates, numbers or hierarchies. Too often, we measure our success in life against the progress we make in our careers. But how can we ensure we're not straying from our values as humans along the way?

“It's actually really important that you succeed at what you're succeeding at, but that isn't going to be the measure of your life", he says.

In the past few weeks, I’ve put out quite some content on celebrating your wins.

I admit that I’ve also thought about success in terms of results and even sometimes in comparison to others, e.g. if you got 90% on a test that I got 85% on, then you’re more “successful” than I am. What a shallow way to think.

I only recently realised that I missed something critical in measuring what I deemed as my success.

I’m coming to learn that true success is not the amount of money we have, it’s not about our degree, our career, a promotion, number of friends, our looks, property, or where we live. These tend to provide that sort of immediate tangible achievement that makes it seem like we’re successful, but they’re not enough.

Our existence on earth is more than any accolades we can amass, true success is a result of the impact on the people around you - family and friends.

I’m curious, how do you measure success?

Here’s wishing you a restful Easter holiday :)