One of the biggest things I had to work on in my journey transitioning from a career that didn’t resonate with who I truly am to re-inventing myself as a purpose-driven entrepreneur was making my own rules about what success meant to me.

Prior to making this transition, I had built a pretty perfect seeming, successful career, having a global role at Google earning six figures.

Going from being universally recognized as ‘successful’ because I was a Googler…to being ‘a nobody’ as a new entrepreneur, was quite a shock to my ego.

What are they going to think of me? Am I ever going to make as much money as before?

To survive it and go through it - and not revert back to the superficial glories of corporate life - I had to go deep into what success really meant to me. It hasn’t been easy, and there were many layers I had to peel off until I reached my truth. And even then, I’ve had to practice remembering over and over, reminding myself why I took this path, what is really important to me, and how I want my life to be.

What we learned success is about

Success can be such a triggering word for many - what comes up when you hear it?

For me, it used to be something like, bragging, showing off, money, sleek corporate offices, luxury - all things that the culture tells us that success is about.

Essentially, the conventional definition of success is about how much money you make. Not how you make it, or how it makes you feel to make it, just the numerical value of it.

Who grew up to believe that all you had to do was do well at school, get good grades, go to university and then get yourself a good job that pays you a good salary so that you can live in the weekends? Me for sure. We learned that it’s all about how big that salary is because this would then allow us to live how we want.

But here’s the thing. Numbers are infinite. There can always be more. There is always more.

What I found is that no matter how big the salary got, it was never enough. The more money I earned the more I spent as a way to feel good about my life. The notion of feeling fulfilled was foreign to me, rather it was all about how much ‘fun’ I could have outside of working hours - which primarily involved spending money on luxurious holidays, and buying things.

After all, that was what I was seeing all over me all the time - the ads when riding the tube every day, ads popping up online wherever I went, going past gigantic posters and messaging telling me that to be happy (and be seen as successful) I need to buy yet another something, or book that fancy two-week holiday in some tropical destination. Sounds so cliche but it’s unfortunately so so true.

I know people who earn six figures in big companies and can’t save anything. I know others who live a luxury lifestyle due to business travel miles and points who then owe thousands in personal credit cards. According to our common perception of success, these people are considered successful - but are they really?

When you equate success to how much money you make or how prestigious your title is - aka what others think of you - sorry to break it to you, but…you can never win.

For a lot of people, success is a way to determine self-worth, and how we feel about ourselves. This is so tricky, because if your definition of success is about (solely) money and status, then you’re likely to feel like whatever you do, it’s never enough. Like you can never reach a place where you can finally feel good enough. There is always more.

This is why I consider myself blessed to have had this realization and matrix break when I reached my then dream job and peak in my previous career, because it was then that it became apparent, that even when I had accomplished my big goal I still didn’t feel good enough. Something was clearly off, and my whole worldview collapsed as a result of it - painfully, but thankfully.

In the process of reconstructing my new worldview, I realized that I had to drop previously held notions and wake up to the fact that success is about what I make of it. I don’t need to live up to anybody’s standards of what success is supposed to be.

Success is about how true I am to myself

I’ve been since consciously creating my new worldview which essentially says that success for me is about how true I am to myself.

It’s about whether I’m following my true desire for life, or not.

It’s about how much I act on living life on my own terms.

For me, this meant identifying my values and consciously acting according to them. The values that guide my life now are authenticity, freedom, connection, and following my desire in everything I do. If I look back to the life I used to live before, I was totally out of alignment with these values. No wonder I felt off, unfulfilled, and eventually burned out.

If you feel like something is missing in your life, if you are constantly judging yourself, feeling like ‘you’re never there’, it’s very possible that there is a misalignment between how you live and what truly matters to you.

Identifying your values, and acting accordingly puts success back in your own hands

If you define success only as how much money you make, you’re naturally going to burn out in the hamster wheel of work.

If you however learn to recognize living in alignment with who you really are as living successfully, your cup will always be full.

When you learn to see success in more aspects of life, not only career or business but how you show up for yourself, how you connect to others, how you contribute to the lives of others, then you can really work on aligning your actions according to those things. You get a real chance in directing your life towards the things that matter the most.

From this place, you can go on and create whatever it is, business or workwise that is going to bring you the wealth you desire. In the end, the more fulfilled you are from the inside, meaning the more you cultivate your own self-worth, the more output and value you will be able to offer. The value of your output or how much value you offer to others, then directly determines your physical manifestation of wealth, which money essentially represents.

Here are some examples of values to get you started. Go through the list, and choose max five of these that speak the most to you. It’s about how you want to live your life, and how everything you do aligns with it.

Authenticity Achievement Adventure Authority Autonomy Balance Beauty Boldness Compassion Challenge Citizenship Community Competency Contribution Creativity Curiosity Determination Fairness Faith Fame Friendships Fun Growth Happiness Honesty Humor Influence Inner Harmony Justice Kindness Knowledge Leadership Learning Love Loyalty Meaningful Work Openness Optimism Peace Pleasure Poise Popularity Recognition Religion Reputation Respect Responsibility Security Self-Respect Service Spirituality Stability Status Trustworthiness Wealth Wisdom

End the comparison game and not feeling good enough by aligning with your values

How often do you compare yourself to others, or want what other people have?

When you’re not clear on your values, and what success means to you, or when you don’t live by these values and definitions, it’s easy to measure yourself up against others.

Then you feel not good enough, because you have/are less than them. You’re completely basing your worth on external factors, rather on what is important to you.

So, look at your life and the different areas that are important to you, and choose up to five values that you feel are the most important to you. Then be honest with yourself - how are you living up to these values in your life?

If your life is currently not in alignment with your values, it’s time to take radical responsibility for yourself and get to work. Otherwise, how long are you willing to wait before you live your life according to who you really are?

Set goals that empower you and help you succeed

When you define success as living as truthfully as you can, then it doesn’t matter what your title says, or how much money you make.

You’re successful because you are true to yourself.

From this place, the world is your oyster, you start from a full cup. You stay positive, and you can control how successful or not you are by showing up every day according to your values.

It can take time to create a life by conscious design. It’s ok to start from any place, what’s important is that you start somewhere! If you’re feeling stuck and don’t know what you want in the long term, I encourage you to do this 20min Envision Your Future Self hypnosis to get some clarity.

Then it’s about creating a vision for yourself, your work, your business, your lifestyle, your family and social life. From this vision, you need to set regular goals and start adopting daily habits that will help you to reach them.

For me, realizing that I wanted absolute freedom and authenticity in my life, meant that I wanted to have my own business. And so my goal was to transition from my career and become an entrepreneur. To do that I had to help myself by changing my routines and habits to support this transition. I started prioritizing my time according to making this transition, I read more, I exercised more, I devoted more time to my personal development and self-care. All things that helped me go deeper into myself, connect with my purpose and what I really want out of my business. But also things that helped me feel at my best so that I could carry out this transition. Filling my cup from the inside through getting clearer and clearer about who I am and what I want, while taking care of myself, on all levels, body, mind, emotions, spirit.

As they say, success is a snowball effect of every day little wins. It’s not about the big moments, it’s about consistent change and growth.

You want to start your own business, but you’re unsure of yourself, you’re doubting whether this is for you, or feeling not good enough?

Define your values, start aligning your actions with them, and set the right goals and daily routines to help you get where you want to be.

Get the right support system, plug yourself into community, and believe in yourself and all the wonderful possibilities that are available to you when you start going after what you want.

And if you need help with all this, reach out to me here.