Have you ever looked at everything you are doing and still somehow felt behind? You may be working, accomplishing things, taking care of people, making plans, and moving forward, yet the moment one goal is finished, your attention shifts almost immediately to the next thing that still has not happened. Sometimes I wonder how much of that feeling comes from the way we have learned to measure whether our lives are going well.
I have been realizing that I spent a lot of my life using achievement as proof that I was successful. When the evidence was visible, I felt like I was doing well, but when the evidence took too long to arrive, I started questioning myself. I am learning to tolerate the space between effort and evidence, and I think that has required me to reconsider what I have been calling success altogether.
For most of my life, the formula seemed simple. Goals completed, boxes checked, milestones reached, progress made. Achievement meant success, and if I was not achieving something, some part of me wondered whether I was falling behind.
The problem is that life does not always cooperate with that formula. Sometimes goals take longer than expected, circumstances change, responsibilities grow, or life asks us to develop in ways that do not produce an obvious result. For someone who likes progress, that can be incredibly uncomfortable.
One small glimpse of the system I use to keep creating without making myself feel behind.
What Happens When Your Definition of Success Depends on Outcomes?
I have realized that some of my anxiety around progress has come from attaching my sense of success to outcomes. If I reach the goal, I am doing well, and if I do not reach the goal, some part of me immediately starts wondering what I did wrong. There is not much room in that equation for a season when you are doing the work but cannot point to the result yet.
There is also very little room for changing your mind, adjusting a timeline, or discovering that something you once wanted no longer fits the woman you have become. I wrote about that recently in The Dreams My 20-Year-Old Self Had for Me, because so much of feeling “behind” can come from comparing our current lives to timelines created by younger versions of ourselves. A delayed goal is not automatically a failed life, and a changed dream does not necessarily mean we did something wrong.
Sometimes the timeline changes because life changed. Sometimes it changes because we changed. And sometimes the dream remains exactly the same while the path toward it becomes much longer than we expected.
Being a High Achiever Also Taught Me to Expect the Reward
There is another part of this that I have had to be honest with myself about. Being a high achiever taught me to expect fairly quick evidence that my effort was working. I became accustomed to a world where effort often had a recognizable ending.
You finish the assignment and receive the grade. You complete the project and check the box, or you reach the milestone and get to feel the satisfaction of knowing that you did what you set out to do. Even when the work was difficult, there was often something tangible waiting on the other side of it.
I did not realize how much I had grown accustomed to that kind of instant gratification until I started working toward things that refused to give it to me. When the result did not come quickly enough, I could start wondering whether the work mattered at all. I wanted the milestone, the number, the visible proof that said, Yes, this is working.
But some of the things that matter most in my life now do not offer that kind of confirmation. You cannot always measure self-trust after a week, know immediately whether a long-term decision was the right one, or see the outcome of work you only started yesterday. Sometimes you have to keep moving before you receive any evidence that moving was worthwhile.
That has been an adjustment for me.
I am learning that the space between effort and evidence is not automatically evidence of failure. Sometimes it is simply the middle. And maybe learning how to remain in that middle without immediately abandoning the work is an achievement of its own.
What If Achievement and Success Are Not the Same Thing?
The more I have thought about this, the more I have started questioning the equation itself. What if achievement and success are related, but they are not actually the same thing? What if success does not only exist at the finish line?
There are still things I want for my life, my family, my finances, my work, and the business I am building. I am not interested in convincing myself that wanting those things makes me too ambitious or insufficiently grateful. I still believe there is something beautiful about setting a goal and eventually being able to say, I did that.
But there are also things I have gained that would never fit neatly onto a résumé, spreadsheet, or vision board. Self-awareness, resilience, perspective, stronger boundaries, faith, and a better understanding of myself have all required something from me. They may be harder to display, but that does not make them insignificant.
That is where my definition of success has started becoming more complicated.
Achievement gives us something we can point to. Internal growth often asks us to notice something quieter. If I only count what other people could see, I would leave out a significant portion of the woman I have become.
I Can See This Most Clearly in the Way I Am Building Something of My Own
Building Her Morning Commute has made this impossible for me to ignore. I have very big dreams for what I want this business to become, and if I measured success only by the final outcome, there would be one very obvious question: Has it replaced my 9-to-5 yet? Right now, the answer is no.
According to my old equation, that could mean I have not succeeded yet. I could look at the destination, look at where I currently am, measure the distance between the two, and decide that everything in the middle is simply waiting. But that would ignore nearly everything the process has already required me to learn.
I have learned how to create and publish consistently without needing every piece of content to immediately perform. I have learned systems I did not know before, experimented with ideas, changed direction when something did not make sense, and kept building during periods when the numbers were still small. I am also learning how to look at information as information instead of immediately turning every result into a judgment about whether I am good at this.
And perhaps the most meaningful change for me is that I am learning how to continue when there is no immediate reward. Sometimes I publish something and very little happens, and sometimes I have to wait weeks or longer before I have enough information to understand what worked. Sometimes the only evidence available to me that day is that I showed up again.
A few years ago, I am not sure I would have counted that as success. I probably would have counted the business reaching the destination and overlooked much of what happened while I was getting there. Now I am starting to understand that reaching the destination will be an achievement, but becoming someone who can keep building before the destination is visible is growth.
A lot of building happens long before there is anything impressive to show for it.
Maybe Your Version Has Nothing to Do With a Business
Maybe your version is a degree, a career change, rebuilding your finances, raising your children, improving your health habits, writing something, learning something new, or trying to create a different kind of life. Maybe you have been working toward something that has not given you much evidence yet that your effort is paying off. If you only measure the final outcome, it can become very easy to overlook what the process has already required from you.
Maybe you are more disciplined than you were a year ago. Maybe you recover faster when something does not go according to plan, change direction without immediately calling yourself a failure, or continue doing something meaningful without needing anyone else to applaud it. Maybe you are simply better at staying with yourself during the uncertain part than you used to be.
Those things may not be the achievement you originally set out to earn. They may not be the thing you imagined celebrating when you created the goal. But they are not nothing.
And I think some of us need permission to count them.
What If the Growth That Matters Most Is Hard to Measure?
I have learned how to keep going through difficult seasons, ask myself better questions, and challenge some of the beliefs I once accepted without examining them. I have learned that something taking longer than expected does not automatically mean I am doing it wrong. Those changes are not as easy to measure as a completed goal, but they have changed the way I move through my life.
Growth is not always loud enough for other people to notice. Sometimes it looks like consistency, discernment, patience, or making a decision differently because you know yourself better than you once did. Sometimes your circumstances have barely changed, but the woman living inside those circumstances has.
That kind of progress can be easy to overlook because there is no finish line attached to it. Nobody sends you a certificate when you become more trusting of yourself or when something that once felt impossible becomes something you can navigate. But maybe the absence of a formal milestone does not mean there was no progress.
This is one reason Self Return has become such an important idea for me. Returning to yourself is not always about finding the woman you used to be or undoing everything that happened along the way. Sometimes it is noticing the woman you have become and allowing what she has learned to count.
Achievement Is External. Success Can Be Internal.
Achievement is usually something we can point to. You finished the degree, got the promotion, bought the house, launched the business, reached the number, or completed the thing you said you were going to complete. There is nothing wrong with wanting those moments or feeling proud when they happen.
But success can also be internal. Achievement is something you do, while success can also include someone you become. The more I separate those two ideas, the less willing I am to postpone every feeling of fulfillment until another milestone arrives.
Because there will always be another milestone.
There will always be another number, another level, another goal, or another version of when I finally get there. If I decide that success only becomes available once I reach the next thing, I can spend an entire life standing inside things I once prayed for while emotionally living somewhere in the future.
I do not want to live that way anymore.
Can You Want More Without Treating Your Current Life Like It Is Not Enough?
This has probably been the most important distinction for me. I still have goals, and some of them are very big. Redefining success does not require me to pretend that I no longer want to achieve anything.
I still want financial growth, meaningful work, and a business capable of becoming much larger than it is today. I still enjoy planning, building, improving, and seeing evidence that something I worked hard on is working. I am not trying to remove ambition from my personality.
I am trying to stop using achievement as proof that my life is worthy.
There is a difference between wanting more and treating everything you already have as an inconvenient waiting room. There is a difference between pursuing growth and constantly moving the finish line so quickly that you never experience the life happening underneath your goals. I want to learn how to hold ambition without using it against myself.
That is part of what I was working through when I wrote Maybe I Don’t Need to Become Type B. Maybe I do not need to become less driven in order to become more peaceful. Maybe I need a healthier relationship with the part of me that wants to keep moving.
What Would Success Look Like If You Included Who You Are Becoming?
Maybe success is not only buying the house. Maybe it is creating a home where you can breathe, feel safe, and recognize yourself. Maybe both things are allowed to matter.
Maybe success is not only making more money. Maybe it is also becoming someone who can make decisions without fear controlling every one of them. The financial goal can still matter while the internal change matters too.
Maybe success is not only being productive. Maybe it is building a life where productivity does not require you to constantly abandon yourself. You can be proud of what you accomplish without making accomplishment the price of feeling good about who you are.
And maybe success is not only reaching the goal. Maybe it is becoming someone you actually trust to live the life you are building. That is harder to put on a checklist, but I am not convinced that makes it less valuable.
Maybe We Need Another Way to Measure
I still think there is value in asking ourselves what we have achieved. Accomplishments matter, goals matter, and there are things I will be incredibly proud to reach. I just do not think that question should be allowed to stand alone.
Maybe we also need to ask ourselves who we have become while we were trying. What can you handle now that you could not handle before, what have you learned about yourself, and where have you become more patient, discerning, consistent, or willing to trust the process? Those answers may reveal progress that your traditional definition of success has been ignoring.
I still want the goals. I still want the feeling of reaching something I worked hard for, and I do not think there is anything wrong with that. I just do not want to miss my life while I am reaching for them.
And I do not want to wait until I arrive somewhere else before I allow myself to call any part of this a success.
Continue the conversation
If this made you question whether you have been measuring your current life against an old definition of success, read The Dreams My 20-Year-Old Self Had for Me next. That essay explores what happens when the life you are living does not match the timeline you once imagined, and what it can look like to decide whether the blueprint itself needs to change.
