When I finally make over $100,000 per year, I’ll be successful. When I walk across the stage and receive my degree, that’s when I’ll experience success. As soon as my Instagram highlight reel looks as good as that person’s, that’s when I will know what success feels like. Once my son gets his act together, I’ll be a successful parent.
There are so many definitions and rules we put around success in our own minds. But we would argue that none of the above are really what success looks like. They might be temporary definitions of success in your own life, but if we can promise one thing, it’s that the feeling of success from that moment will be fleeting.
When we started our own business, we had an idea of what success would look like in our own minds. Success for us was being high-end luxury wedding photographers that were flown all around the world to photograph million dollar weddings. As amazing as that sounds, we have a feeling that achieving that goal wouldn’t have necessarily made us feel successful. The truth is, even ‘success’ in that way is momentary. There will always be a bigger, better, higher goal to reach. There is always another pinnacle to shoot for. There is always someone who can one-up your definition of success. That is, unless you have the right definition of success. That truth, no one can beat.
Look, it doesn’t matter how much money you make, how many degrees you have or how well your children behave. Those ideas of success will never be truly fulfilling. What you need to look at is your definition of happiness. If you can define what happiness looks like in your own life, then you’ve defined what success should look like.
We’ll make it personal. Our goal of being high end luxury wedding photographers that jet set around the world has changed. After working to build our business together, we’ve realized where our passions are. We’ve noticed that we are booking family lifestyle and business branding sessions more than anything else. We came to realize that those things made us equally as happy and decided to double down on them. If our definition of success had been that globetrotting wedding photographer life, how bummed out would we be? Since our happiness is found elsewhere, we were able to identify our strengths and play into them, make changes, and be better for it.
You see, true happiness doesn’t fade and isn’t determined on a set of circumstances or achievements. Our happiness is found in working together as husband and wife, working on our own schedule so that we can maximize family time with our kiddos, and blessing other people through our work. Those things, friend, are definitions of success that no one can take from us or one-up us on. Those are the definitions of success we should all work towards.
If we could put it as an equation, here is our formula for success.
Success = Your Own Happiness.
Not someone else’s expectations. Not a salary level. Not a recognition or relationship. It’s your own happiness.
Find that level of happiness in your own life and live in it! It that’s working 40 hours a week at a mindless job that you aren’t passionate about that provides what your family needs and allows you to spend time with them – do it! If that is working 80 hours a week at a high end firm because you want to own it one day – then do it! Either way, don’t let others define your success. Find happiness, and live in it!
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