Are You Having The Right Perspective On Your Success?

Happy Sunday! I felt it’s time for another vulnerable post. Get yourself comfortable but also ready, because what I am going to talk about today, might be uncomfortable to read at times. I am going to talk about success. And about why I called my blog and my podcast (find the link here) “My Kind Of Success” in the first place. I am sharing my success story. And what a story it is.

Have you ever felt like you are not all that successful? What you have accomplished thus far in your life does not deserve to be called success? Or your “real” success is yet to come? I wonder if the “court of public opinion” might have something to do with that? The court of public opinion is not only providing a very single sided definition, but also a whole lot of judgement. Judgement preferably cast over others and their successes. You just need to google the word “success”, to get some kind of confirmation of this perspective. Even dictionary.com has a pretty restricted view on success as you can see here.

As I shared in the intro of my podcast, I do not claim to have all the (right) answers. I have a lot of personal opinions though. But most importantly I do have even more questions. And today’s question is: If you are not feeling all too successful, are you having the right perspective on your own success? My personal opinion? You might not!

Since I promised a vulnerable post, let’s have a look at my (kind of) success, shall we? First using the public standards for “success”. The standards that you can find on Social Media and probably in your work environment etc.. Unfortunately those can also be found in many of our own heads. Basically looking through the lens of those who dare to judge. Judge a book by it’s cover and a person by their very own personal standards. And that, again, includes our own judgement of ourselves, too.

So, here it goes.

I am a 46 years old, cis gender woman, married with a puppy, (6 year old pooches can still be called puppy in my books) but no children. I went to University, but left without a degree of any kind. And, since I did not grow up in the US, I do not even have a College degree. Instead I worked as a Customer Service Agent for quite some time. And was unemployed after I lost my job twice. In fact, I was already 30 years old when I “landed” my first stable job. So my “real” career only started 16 years ago.

I was told, by a previous boss, I would never be a a good people leader as I did not have that in me. And despite my fairly advanced (old?) age, I am just a Director of Customer Service. My boss, a Vice President, is some 15 (ish) years younger than me. Much like many other Vice Presidents in our organization are younger, too. I even bet some much more “senior” leaders in our organization are younger or at the very least my same age.

I had been significantly overweight (obese) for most of my life from probably age 12 or so. And I am not good at applying make-up either. If it weren’t for my husband I would probably also still dress in all black all the time. Even at 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

And I consider myself successful. Very successful even.

Let the judging begin!

“If you do not have children, you haven’t accomplished much in your personal life.” And of course there is “you could not keep those two jobs and then could not find work for quite some time afterwards? Something must be wrong with you as an employee.” Let’s not forget the “At your age you should be much more advanced in your career. You should not be a Director for more to than two years and you are in year 7 already”. “Have you at least made some significant amounts of money through investments?” No. We have not.

Sounds familiar? How many of you, reading this right now, have told yourself something like this or at least similar? I have. I have absolutely told myself these things. Just a lot worse. Because we are not only our own worst critics, we are also not giving ourselves nearly as much compassion as we would give others. Especially compassion reflected in the choice of words used in our negative self-talk. We can be outright mean. I can be very mean.

Not anymore though. I have helped myself grow out of this kind of attitude. And I have trained myself to ignore the court of public opinion as well. In fact, these days it rather amuses me to see others cast judgement over me and my life. And it makes me feel sad. For them. Because people usually just project their own expectations, insecurities and dissatisfactions on others. And based on the harsh judgement I personally have experienced, I guess some people are really not happy with themselves and their lives.

So let’s get back to me thinking and wholeheartedly feeling I am quite successful and how I got to that point. Well, first of all I turned 40. I am serious. A lot of the change in my perspective had to do with me turning 40. Now the good thing is, you don’t have to wait until you turn 40 yourself to get there, too. As you know, one size does not fit all. So aside from turning 40 years old, what did I do?

I shifted my perspective. Sounds simple, can be rather tricky. The first thing I had to do was to stop comparing myself to others. Let’s face it, there is always going to be someone who is better at something we strive to do well. And comparing ourselves to those can be so discouraging. And then there are those, who are actually worse at the same thing. If I would compare myself to those, would that make me feel better? Not really. I would then just feel mediocre by definition.

When I started my Weight Watchers (WW) journey I realized, I would not make it to my personal goal, if I kept comparing myself. My husband joined me (by my choice; I am the cook) in the program. And, like many men, he lost the pounds so quickly, it made me dizzy. Had I continued to compare myself to him, I’d never have lost the almost 60 pounds I ended up getting rid of. Ha! So I was overweight my entire life, but not anymore. The biggest success in this story is still the fact that I learned to stop comparing myself to others. For good.

Instead I started to take a look back at my own life. Ugh…not always a nice movie to watch. One with a fair share of drama and a lot of love, too. But definitely an important one. Because it gave me the real perspective on my own success. To this day I find it quite impressive, yes I do say so myself, to see just how far I have come. To a Director of Customer Service? After some 25 years in the Business? That’s success for you?

Ok, let me tell you about myself. The “ugly” stuff.

I grew up in a tiny village in the North of Germany. With an alcoholic Dad with a tendency to aggression. To this day, by the way, I sometimes feel the urge to apologize for not having had it as bad, because I never was the target of his physical aggression. Really interesting how deep this whole comparison thing is going…but I digress.

I was bullied from age 10 or 11. Parts of my body have been compared to an udder more times than I could have counted. Even before the bullying started, I was considered and treated a stranger, because I wasn’t literally born in that village. We moved in with my Grandparents when I was 5 as my parents couldn’t afford the rent of our apartment anymore. And because of some kind of fight my Dad had had with the landlord.

I moved out at the age of 19 to go and study politics. But in reality I needed and used this time to overcome my childhood trauma and finally come out on the other side. Alive. And even somewhat well. After my first gig in the company of a friend I at first mainly chose the wrong bosses, leading to me losing two jobs that I should have never started in the first place, because true respect was never served.

But I spent a good amount of my life and time trying to please others to satisfy an unstillable craving for positive attention. Thanks, bullies. Want to hear more about how I overcame this specific hurdle? You can find the post here. For this post it’s sufficient to say I realized what was happening and put in the work. The craving is gone, but I will never be fully “cured”.

I met my soulmate online and we moved in together 3 days after our first date. And despite us both carrying our own packages from our past, we are about to celebrate our 22nd anniversary of love and laughter together. Married for 10 years this March. Our life is more sunshine than it isn’t and we are grateful for that. And I am able to feel save. Those of you who grew up like I did will be able to appreciate this statement.

We both like kids and kids from family and friends usually like us, too. Yet, we both agreed to not have children, partly because we know we are not up for the responsibility. Our fur kid is more than enough responsibility for the two of us. Especially since they never grow up. It’s a choice. Our choice.

7 years ago I jumped on the opportunity to make our dream of working in the US come true. I was able to secure a Director role with a Fortune 500 company in the US. And I also started my role in their headquarter in the middle of the Financial District of New York City. I have been working in several different roles in that same company since. Met a lot of people on the way, who became friends and are to this day. I was even able to mentor some and see them strive and grow the way they wanted to.

Oh and I launched a blog and just lately a podcast and even though my audience is not gigantic (yet), I have gotten the best feedback any creator can get. The feedback, that I have inspired another person and their life. Yes, one person is really all it takes for me to feel successful. How awesome is that.

I have a good relationship with my younger boss and am able to learn from him as much as I am able to provide some guidance based on my long years of experience. And, most importantly, I am leading a fantastic team and, measured by their trust and ability to confide in me, I am a good leader to them. A leader who focuses on their own growth and development, makes self-care as much a priority as caring for their team and the results and goals. A leader who makes mistakes and fails on a regular basis and then writes and talks about it. To make it easier for others to feel comfortable doing the same.

A leader and human who shares the ugly parts of their life, just so others can understand that success comes in many shapes and forms. At different times in your life.

If you would ask my 8 year old self, who considered it a success to have spotted her Dad returning from the pub by lurking through her bedroom curtains at night, to not get surprised by the fights in her sleep, what she thought about my journey, what do you think she would say? She would probably not believe that anything like that could ever happen.

And I am not one to look back and wish I could go back and tell her, so that she could feel more encouraged. Not wasting my time on lookbacks, unless they serve me. Also, none of this just so happened. I made it happen.

So, this is my kind of success. This is the perspective I choose to take on myself and my personal success. A perspective that makes me very proud to be me. Let me repeat again, what I said before: One size does not fit all. My success is mine and I would not want to have it any other way. are

How about you?

Still listening to those voices inside your head, or from the outside world, trying to judge you? Time to shush them or at least shut them out. Your story is hopefully nothing like mine. But you will have your own story to tell. And that is the story you should look at, when you determine your “success”. Compare yourself. To your former self. And allow yourself to be stunned, surprised, excited and super proud of how far you have come.

Because you, dear reader, are as successful as you allow yourself to feel. It’s your kind of success. Claim it!

And to those inclined to judge another person’s success: Don’t. You can’t even begin to appreciate the full scope of their success or their story behind it and you probably never will.

Take good care,

Nannette