Redefine Your Definition of Success
How to Find a Balance Between Crushing Revenue Goals and Self-care by redefining your definition of success.
For an entrepreneur, your mindset is your most powerful asset.
While owning my first company and for years after its sale, I was focused on climbing the ladder to “success”—constantly working, staying up late, and sacrificing relationships with family and friends—only to eventually slip down those shaky steps, damaging my health along the way.
It was during a vulnerable time of healing, those moments of sitting in bed and wondering if I would ever be able to own a company or even work again, that I realized, my way of life was not going to lead me to true success. It has to come from within.
Success is subjective.
It’s weighted with feelings of validation, accomplishment, and fulfillment. It’s attached to the outcomes we think we deserve. Whether your success is validated by pleasing others or briefly fulfilled by internal feelings of accomplishment, the definition of success is different for everyone.
When you strive for success with the goals to please someone, you sacrifice parts of yourself, whether that is your relationships with family and friends, moments of reflection and internal growth, or your physical and mental health.
Highly driven entrepreneurs seem to think that if you look at this the other way—striving for personal success by exerting time and energy into your relationships, moments of leisure and development, or your health—you then sacrifice your business. This mindset will keep you small. It will hold you back in the end by running you to the ground one way or another.
Entrepreneurs are typically wired the same: driven, go-getters, hustlers.
We crave those feelings of validation that follow each accomplishment, each person we please, each shaky step we take up the ladder.
Therefore, it’s easy to say what success can look like in business: impact, revenue, growth, becoming a market leader, selling a company, etc. But professional success doesn’t mean that you are successful, and those feelings of validation are fleeting.
The change comes from within, from knowing who you are and who you want to be.
As a 16-year-old, knowing these things is almost impossible. I was running my own company on top of the typical high school activities. I neglected this essential growing stage in life in order to achieve what I thought success should mean.
My definition of success was reaching six figures, being a household name, and selling in multiple stores. As a young entrepreneur, I was eager to climb that ladder, trading nights with friends and dinner conversations with family for work in my parents’ basement.
After endless hours of working to build my own “successful” business, I found myself trapped beneath constant stress. While I was grasping for those feelings of validation, accomplishment, and fulfillment, I was gasping for air.
Reaching six figures in sales and selling the company was rewarding. I had climbed to the top of the ladder by the age of 20, and all that suffocating stress almost felt worth it. Almost.
Only a few years later came a chronic disease diagnosis, which likely flared up because of the stress and my constant go-go-go attitude. After jumping into the corporate world too early, and suddenly finding myself back in entrepreneurship, I knew it had to be different this time.
I redefined success: To build a business that serves others, allows me to prioritize my health, and STILL achieves my revenue goals.
I wrote down boundaries, giving myself the flexibility I needed to truly be successful. I took my side hustle full time with the internal desire to help entrepreneurs incorporate self-care into building business empires. That is my purpose. That is my mission.
Today, my success comes from within. It comes from nurturing my health, showing up in my relationships, being present, and helping entrepreneurs build their own six-figure businesses while balancing self-care. By conserving the energy that comes with constantly seeking validation, I am able to replenish that energy into my own health and easily give it back to others.
It took me getting knocked to my knees by an autoimmune disease, it took many moments of physical pain and mental desperation, for me to change my mindset on what success really means. And as I took time to heal, taking a step back from my go-go-go lifestyle, I found validation within myself, accomplishment with my mindset, and fulfillment through serving others.
