A generation ago success was defined by the size of your house, the car in your driveway, the watch wrapped around your wrist and the view from your office. Materialism and visible possessions were the scorecards. Have things changed? What do you need to have, accomplish or experience to feel successful?
Photo: Kevin Dooley
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To me, “success” in my generation is measured by courage I feel I’m always measuring myself against peers who have traveled more, started their own business, done more volunteer work, are “greener”, and who’ve achieved a higher level of education. It’s not so much the material results of these efforts – the success lies in the freedom and courage to required to pursue them.
I don’t gauge success by money or power, but by personal satisfaction. If I can find balance and happiness in doing something that I truly enjoy, I feel successful. Earning money, is of course an added bonus, because it opens the doorways to the possibility of future career and personal opportunities.
I have a feeling that for the most part, the definition of success hasn’t completely changed. When you think of someone successful you think of someone who has it all together: a nice place to live, a good car, etc.
But more and more I have a feeling that people are defining success differently, and it isn’t the same for everyone. As long as you’re happy with where you are in life, you can be successful even if you aren’t some CEO. At least, I hope that would be how people would define success.
Just a few years ago, I thought “success” would be landing the dream job I’d had since high school — writing for Rolling Stone. But after graduating college and going through the process of finding a job, I realized that I can still have that idea of a “dream job” and a “dream life” — but those dreams don’t always happen, even if you push and push and try as hard as you can. That’s not being pessimistic; it’s being realistic.
Now, I just define success as being happy with my life and being happy with who I am as a person.
I think success is different for everyone, but at this stage in my life, success=financial independence from my parents. Even if I’m poor and have about 3 bucks in my checking account by the end of the month, I still consider myself successful because I don’t call mom or dad for anything. So in my eyes, being successful is making the right decisions to lead a happy and self sufficient life.
I define success in very simple terms. I mainly look to see if I have been able to accomplish what I set out to do. This allows for success on different levels which is really important to me. There can be small day-to-day successes, did that proposal get out the door, and they can be within a larger timeframe as well. One example of this is that this fall I wanted to create more time to race cyclocross again (http://vimeo.com/5923730). This required many small successes in order for the large success to take place. Materialism isn’t something that I think of when I think of success, in my mind it is about being able to do/participate in things that I deem valuable.
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Speaking for myself only – I think it’s less tangible. More idea and action centric. Creating a new solution that hasn’t been done before is important to me. Leaving my mark.
Fun question! I think the definition of success has certainly changed. More and more people are defining success on their terms versus the rat race definition of previous years. Having success in personal lives has become a much higher priority and a sense of success on a greater good level has also risen. It is becoming less about materialism and more about bragging rights over experiences. More about “I’ve done…” versus “I have…”.
http://twitter.com/RossLeadership
Success today is doing what you want to do and feeling secure. It’s majoring in Art History and then working in it. Getting an English degree then actually writing. Or majoring in political management, deciding you actually love engineering, then doing that instead. Money is still important and climbing the social ladder is still there, but personal satisfaction seems to be the biggest part of it today among most of my friends.
I think how success is defined has changed for our generation, especially after watching our parents strive for what was traditionally considered success (being rich, having a house and other status symbols). I’ve seen Boomers achieve “success” who worked well over 40 hours a week, became burnt out, didn’t have time to spend with their kids and found no joy in their materialistic accomplishments. They were never satisfied with life.
I define success by my happiness and fulfillment in life and if I am financial stable. By this I mean: all the bills being paid? Am I living within my means? And am I not stressing about money? In the years I have been working, I found more happiness and fulfillment in jobs I loved that paid less, than at jobs where I was paid well and had more prestige. Loving what you do for a living is difficult to quantify, but to me, it is more valuable than additional compensation. Success is enjoying everyday and being paid enough to have a roof over your head and keep Sallie Mae at bay.
I see many of my peers name dropping, talking about how long they’ve been on Twitter, or how quickly they got a Wave invite. I see these all as status symbols. How well you are connected, who you know, and how technologically savvy you are. Flashing an iPhone always helps.
Some refreshing answers from the younger folks here. I tell the 20-somethings and 30-somethings at work that I’ve learned as I get older that you don’t have control over everything that happens to you, but you have 100 percent control over how you react to it. If you want to be stressed out, that’s up to you. If you want to be happy, that’s up to you.
Also, my apologies from my generation to your generation for not leaving the best of worlds for you so far. Hopefully, we’ll do better as the senior members of society.
Our generation defines success in personal terms. The comments here prove that by their diversity. Few people’s measure of success matches another. I think it used to be everyone equally thought success was about your status and flaunting it accordingly: the car, the house, the income, and so on.
For me, success would be doing a job I love, in a location I love, surrounded by people I love. That’s it. There’s no amount of money or acclaim I can achieve in that process where I will then say, “A-ha! I am now a success.” Success isn’t a constant in those terms. Success in those terms is fleeting. Maybe the glow lasts long enough to celebrate a promotion or recent award, but what of the next day? You can’t rest on your laurels and I know mine can lose their luster quite quickly.
As such I look for contentment in the things which are constant–the job I would attend every day, the people I would surround myself by, and the location where I would live. If the majority of my days can be lived this way, then I will consider my life a success.
Success now is about being able to say, “yeah i did that.” I think we now measure success is much smaller quantities, the idea of the American dream is no longer the reflection of success. We succeed by going for a run in the morning when you would rather sleep, or by finishing a paper, a project, a program, whatever it may be. It is not that we don’t want the larger and finer things in life, it is just that we don’t actively strive for them as a determination of our success in life, that is something we determine ourselves
The definition of success is written as “attainment of wealth, fame, etc”. However, I don’t think you can define success because it’s such a subjective thing. Everyone has different expectations in life to feel like they’ve achieved the things that make them truly happy: some people want to own a large home in an affluent neighborhood, take extravagant vacations to all corners of the earth and drive an S-series with a vanity plate. Other people want to be able to just enjoy what they do for a living, and share their enjoyment for life with people they care about, and whatever else comes with that is icing on the cake. For me, you’ve succeeded in life if you can support yourself and the people you love, and you can wake up every morning knowing you love what you do each and every day, no matter how much or little comes with it.
Most still see material possessions as the sign of success. I’m no exception. I like nice things. But, I also like the “ha I did that feeling” Jen mentioned. Even when it yields no wealth. I see success as finding the balance between doing what you love and getting what you like.
I don’t think our generation has a single definition of success. We all seem to define it in our own way. Success, at its simplest, is achieving what we, as individuals, want. Vague, I know. But each of us views a successful life path in our own way. For some, it’s money; others, a successful career. For me, success is happiness. Again, vague. Right now, though, if I had to be more precise, success would be a corner office, a husband, and a child.
Success isn’t really money+happiness anymore. To me, especially, being 2 years younger than everyone else in my year, and graduating a year early, success is being able to find yourself and differentiating yourself from the crowd.
It is not an easy task, with the economy being as is, and last years graduates competing with this year’s graduates in the market. But I think success is finding that unique-ness that you can identify yourself with and find something you are truly passionate about.
I don’t think that this idea of success is very specific to our generation as well. Plenty of decades ago, trying to find your niche in a society was a huge pressure. I think this issue will also continue in the future, even past our generation.
Success is a very subjective term with a variety of definitions, yet I truly believe success is a result of doing things you love and finding joy in what you do everyday. As the saying goes, “find a job you love and you will never work a day in your life.” That’s my definition of success, and what I hope to achieve in the future.
For me success is not measured by the amount of money I make or the how prestigious the company I work for is. Success is doing something that makes me proud of. Success is doing something that makes me happy. Success is doing something that leaves a positive impact in people’s lives. The activities I consider successful in my life are the ones that make me call my parents or friends in the middle of the night and tell them what I have done.
I hope you do not mind that I am not a Millennial. This is my boomer input. The percentage of boomers who were taught that achieving success was the size of your house, the car in the driveway and the watch wrapped around your wrist, didn’t receive a balanced view of life. THEY defined each other by material success, money and possessions. It is the same as ‘good’ people deciding who the other ‘good’ people are.
I hope the Millennials get it right. I think they will. Achieving self-respect, honor, charity, kindness, workplace ethics, and family values. These are what defines a man and woman as being successful. This has not changed for the next generation, it has always been that way.
The millennials have given some great comments here that show they are thinking and engaged adults.
I guess I am a cross between boomer and millennial on this, my success isn’t based on happiness, it is based on whether I achieve the things I set out to do. One of those is to be happy, but others depend on what level of success I have at work, including how much money I make. Big houses and fancy cars don’t mean as much to me as financial freedom, which allows me to follow other passions in my life, such as family and many other things.
Success is personal. Success to me is setting a goal, working to achieve the goal and conquering the goal. It’s a constant, overlapping cycle.
I honestly don’t think the question about defining success interesting. I don’t think it has changed much over the years: we are always pulled between doing what we want to do for ourselves (if we can figure that out!) and doing what others expect of us. For me, I followed a very classic path: I let others define success for me for years then finally started trying to define success for myself, but failed until a severe traumatic brain injury knocked me out to wake me up. Literally. I was an Executive Creative Director of a 150-person ad shop and earning a fat paycheck, but miserable. Yet I stuck with it, because I could not define what I wanted to do for myself. After my accident, I still want to write, I still like marketing, but now I have rediscovered songwriting as my true passion. I make zero money from songs and I have lost my job and my ability to do my old job possibly forever, but I am much, much happier and richer than ever.
Jeff
http://www.cerebellumblues.com
Fully agree with some of the peers… success is about having the opportunity to say what you want to say, to do what you want to do and even to fail if that’s the consecuence of having freedom to choose your own way.
I agree with many of my peers who define success as more than physical material gains. Living through unfavorable economic times has taught me to realize success is personal and should be redefined from the picturesque white picket fence idea.
To me, success is the ability to follow your drive and passion regardless of the consequences. Success is actually seizing and creating opportunities instead of leaving the door unanswered.
Success isn’t completely independent from financial success to me, personally. I do think that material things have their place in my definition of success. But true success, the way I think about it for my life, is a sense of fulfillment in life. To feel like I’ve done something worthwhile, made an impact, AND made myself happy along the way is what success is to me. Of course, part of that is also having a home too, being able to afford a home and support those that mean the most to me–not neccessarily my kids because I don’t know if I’ll have any, but anyone that means a lot to me–both financially and emotionally.
I find that success to me means not having any regrets and being at peace with my place in life and in the world. That means that I’m 1) financially independent from my parents, and 2) a proud legacy for my family.
I’m a first generation immigrant, so I know I’ll be successful when my future reaps the rewards of all the sacrifices my family has made to give me a life and education in America. I’m not sure if that necessarily means being rich and famous or a powerbroker. But as long as I know that I’ve done well, and I know that my family is proud of what I’ve achieved, then I know I’m a success.
That, and having no credit card debt.
If you do whatever you want to be happy, and don’t hurt anyone in the process: you are a successful person. Success is ending each day knowing that you enjoyed every minute of it.
I, myself, have a very traditional perception of success – financial stability, comfortable standard of living, promising career, etc.
On top of that, my future outlook and hopes of success also involve family. I hope to be able to comfortably support my parents, my spouse and children, and to be able to leave them with a legacy to set them all up for success.
Much like Brenna, I’d also like to leave my mark on the world. Add value and do something great.
I think I’m a good example of Gen Y ambition – young, restless and wanting more more more, now now now. But realistically of course, I’m far from achieving all my goals, if even possible!
For me I’ve found that success is less defined by the generation I am in so much as where I am in life stage (although as it is I feel very disconnected from Gen Y). When I was 21 and graduating from college success was 100% about my job and defined by the context of my peers. I wanted to get a great job that would be in my field and envied by my peers. Now after being in the working world for almost 5 years *scary* my outlook has completely changed. Career is one part of the equation, but just a small part. It’s more about being able to live a life that’s true to who I am and for me that means a multidimensional life that centers on balance. It means going outside of my comfort zone and being able to master things that I’m not instantly good at. Two years ago I first started snowboarding and what I loved about it was that I was absolutely horrible for awhile. Because of this it meant more once I got to a place that I could get down a blue trail in one piece. I cook a lot and I purposefully pick recipes I know are out of my league because the worst case scenario is they don’t come out perfectly and I learn a lot and the best case scenario is I succeed where I expected to fail.
As much as I hate to admit it, money still plays a role. I want to feel like I am making what I am worth. I also like what money enables me to do. Without it I couldn’t travel as much, cook as much, own a dog, etc. I like that I am at a point in my life that I can do what I want without having to worry where my checking account balance will be or if I have enough money.