Success and the Freedom to Say No

Success is an abstract word. We all use it, but we mean different things. For one person it is financial comfort. For another it is status or recognition. It can also be a feeling about how you spend an ordinary day, quite apart from whether you have hit a particular target. One word can carry as many meanings as there are people who use it.

That is why saying “I want to be successful” explains so little. It can be an admission that you have yet to decide what kind of life you want. Until you can say what you are working towards, success can remain a desire without a shape.

Deciding What Success Means

We often talk about it in results: salary, title, assets and influence. Those things matter, but they cannot describe an entire life. Two people on the same salary can feel very differently about their days. Two people in the same position may come away from it with very different lives.

Before setting a target, ask what you would count as success. What would have to be true for you to say you were there? Without an answer, even a great deal of effort can take you somewhere you never meant to go.

Doing What You Like for a Long Time

The singer Hareem once defined success on a broadcast as doing what you enjoy for a long time. It sounds simple. It includes finding the work, earning a living from it and creating conditions in which you can keep doing it.

What struck me was that he described a condition you can sustain. It is the work you want to return to tomorrow, after the applause is over. Seen that way, success is closer to a set of conditions you live in than to a point you reach.

Enjoying the Work Is Only Part of It

There is another condition worth considering: being able to leave some things undone when you do not want to do them. Many people enjoy their work and put up with conditions, relationships or ways of working they would never choose, just to keep doing it.

Define success only as doing what you love and it becomes easy to justify that bargain. Because you care, you tell yourself you should endure it. Because the work matters, you accept what would otherwise feel unreasonable. It is worth including the freedom to turn down at least some of what makes the work hard to sustain. That choice is part of a workable life.

Can You Spend Time with the People You Want to See?

Relationships give us another measure. What you do matters, and so does who you do it with. Meaningful work is hard to keep doing around people who leave you exhausted. Work that is far from ideal can be bearable, and sometimes enjoyable, if you have good relationships with the people beside you.

It helps to think of success as having enough time to share with people you want in your life. That takes some financial stability, room in the schedule and the mental space to be there.

What Kind of Life Would You Most Want to Avoid?

Thinking seriously about success leads to another question: what kind of life would I most want to avoid? Moving towards a goal matters. So does keeping yourself out of conditions you could not bear. That is a goal in its own right.

Doing work you cannot refuse, spending most of your time with people you would not choose and using much of each day just to get through it can feel frightening. Sometimes what you can avoid tells you more about success than what you can acquire.

Room to Choose

Seen this way, success gives you room to choose. It is being able to decide what you do today, who gets some of your time and what you can refuse. A wider range of choices can make a life feel closer to the one you wanted.

You can continue work you like, decline some of what you dislike and spend time with people you want to see. Keeping those choices available takes care on ordinary days. The result may be made up of days like that.

If you want to be successful, ask what you want and what you hope to avoid. As the answers come into focus, the word begins to describe something real.