EP.21 - Letting Go of Society's Measure of Success
SHOW NOTES:
Conforming to society's measure of success can lead you to feeling unfulfilled and disconnected from your true self.
It is possible to break free from this cycle and live an authentic life that is aligned with your values and aspirations.
How?
Start by getting clear on what your definition of success is and strategise from there.
Focus on self-reflection, self-awareness, and identify what makes you genuinely feel happy, healthy, and accomplished.
Having clarity of where the difference lies between what success means in society and what success means to you will help you find your own path towards living a fulfilled life.
Here are the key takeaways from this episode:
04:02 - What's really important is that you define what success means to you.
06:47 - Be clear of the difference between what success means in society and what success means to you
07:55 - As long as you're emotionally attached to your failures, you're never going to move past them.
13:19 - It's a process of letting go of who you think you need to be, to fit into society's measure of success.
15:42 - Get clear on what your definition of success is, and strategise from there.
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About Me:
I help you lead with fearless authenticity by smashing the self-imposed heteronormative stereotypes that keep you playing small through emotional healing inner child and inherited intergenerational trauma. Create a purposeful life of your unique design by disrupting societal norms and expectations of who you should be. Explore mindfulness, fearless curiosity and loving kindness through the lens of Human Design to thrive as the person you are born to be.
Learn more about my coaching method and join my emotional healing, mindfulness, and music community at melissaindot.com.
TRANSCRIPT
0:00
We're not here to be moulded into a polite, sugary saccharin sweet, compromised version of who you are to fit into what society measures as successful. Nah ah. You're here to be the most incredible version of who you're meant to be. And when you do that, yes, there's going to be a loss of all the people who want you to be something else. That's beautiful, because that space you create is for all the people who are waiting to meet you as the person you are born to be. The most fearlessly authentic version of who you are.
0:41
Hey there, welcome to the Fearlessly Curious podcast, your safe space to listen, lean in and learn the diversity of human experiences through the lens of fearless curiosity. When we learn more about each other, we also learn more about ourselves. How? Because we listen to each other's curiosities and experiences, we relate to that which is in common, and that which sets us apart gives us something to reflect on. We learn through and with each other. I am grateful to you, the global community, for your curious questions. The Fearlessly Curious podcast cannot exist without you.
1:28
Welcome back to the Fearlessly Curious podcast. This is episode 21. I can't believe it, it's been an absolute whirlwind. And I love doing this. Deep down inside, I really love doing this. And this feels like success to me, because of the way it makes me feel in my heart. I'm not gonna lie to you, there are some days when I sit down to record a podcast episode for you that I feel like uh, I don't have to do this, or I'm tired or I'm frustrated. And that's pretty normal, right? We've got these cycles and seasons in life when we feel inspired and other days and weeks where we feel less inspired and less motivated. And in those days, sometimes I honour it, and I don't record. But on other days, I connect to my why. I connect with how I feel, once I've recorded how I feel when I get feedback from you on how helpful you found this, or when I see the growth that this podcast is going through because of you. When I see you share different episodes to people as well, because that's why I'm doing this, right? I'm doing this as a resource, as a space for me to ignite and to activate your curiosity so that we can wake up not just to the world, but to ourselves. We can have these moments where we snap out of autopilot so that we give ourselves this opportunity to really live life fully, or live life in a more expanded way rather than this loop of repetitive behaviour where we're switched off and we're just going through the motions. We get to shake things up a little bit through our fearless curiosity.
3:16
And in a way that's playful and mischievous. And so we're never limited by one way of seeing things, one way of living. It's also a beautiful opportunity to grow together. That's my definition of success right now in this moment today. And it's where I go to whenever I feel unsuccessful, whenever I feel like I'm not there yet, or I'm not far enough along in life, or I'm not successful. Well, let's take it to the other end of the spectrum like my failure.
3:47
How do we let go of the stress and the struggle that we often feel when we're striving for success? My God, there's so many S's. So I did a little bit of research around this. Success. What is success? What's really important is that you define what success means to you. So we're born into this life, most of us at least have put through a system that is set out for us, right? We go to school, we have the different tiers of school, you've heard me say this before. And typically in that system, success is measured on output. It's measured on grades to get ABCD, percentages 95%, you're eight out of 10 or two out of 10. And that's how success is measured. It's measured on a system that wasn't even created by you. And when we stop questioning, when we stop being curious, we can become so locked in and trapped by that system, a value system that maybe deep down inside is not aligned to you. You hold no value to that system and yet, time and time again, you're allowing yourself to be beaten down by that measure of success.
5:01
It's interesting because in terms of humanity, ever since the BC era of time, the definition of success has predominantly been measured by wealth, how much money you have. But as society has evolved, that value of success has also changed and evolved. It started as a measure of wealth, but through modern living, is moved through different stages. How many of you, I'm curious, measure success, as a feeling, as a quality. Like I'm successful, as long as I'm happy, I'm in a place of success.
5:42
But then how do we measure happiness? Happiness, to me, is going to be something different to you. It's the language that we use to define success. Success can also be measured based on your specific goals. Your goal could be completing a project that is successful. For someone else completing a project, but feeling terrible about it, feeling exhausted and burnt out by it, they're not going to see that outcome is successful, because the quality of their life does not enhance their life.
6:18
I guess my point is, to invite you to be curious, as always, about what your measure of success is. And of course, some of you may say, well, Melissa, we live in this world where success is defined by certain values, and I need to fit into this world. How do I navigate fitting into society's measure of success without compromising what my value of successes are? My answer would be, by being aware. By being aware of where the difference lies, by being clear on the dissonance between what success means in society and what success means to you, so that you can strive in order to integrate within society, you can strive for that success that society measures, but also ensure that you're constantly aligning to what success means to you.
7:17
It is possible, entirely possible to honour the value system of success that society holds, without compromising who you are. It is, because it's all down to your own perception. It means possibly accepting that society might see you as a failure, though, that's a hard pill to swallow, right. But at the end of the day, we're always moving forward. And nobody's really going to remember. I know a lot of people's gonna say, Oh, we nobody ever forgets your failures. What I'm going to say is, as long as you hold on to them, as long as you're emotionally attached to your failures, then yes, you're never going to move past them.
8:02
And those people around you who are going to define you by your failures are people that you probably need to leave behind. Letting go of society's measure of success, I'm not going to lie to you isn't necessarily going to be easy. Because it means allowing people to have a judgement and perception of you that is not true to you. It's going to be true to them, because they're measuring it against society's system of values and not yours. But I think what is more painful is when we constantly abandon, when you abandon your value system of success in order to fit into someone else's.
8:44
To give you an example of that, that is personal. My dream is to be a successful recording artist. And I would say by conventional societal measures of success, that would mean selling x number of records CDs, of course, it's measured differently now download streams, and probably winning many, many awards and maybe winning a Grammy and internationally recognised award, or a Brit, under the UK system. Or whatever that might be. Or having a following that's in the millions, having branding, partnerships. Whatever that might be right and how we perceive commercial success to be. So I always dreamed of that for myself. And I never reached that. And for many, many years, I walked around feeling like I was a failure that I never had success. As a recording artist, as a singer songwriter, as a published artist, I didn't. And I was always striving to be better measured on that value system of success. It was tough. It was so hard. I had my first solo album when I moved back to Malaysia in the early 2000s, and I released it in 2007. And I had success with it. Success based on media coverage that had. So much media coverage. I was being booked left, right, and centre by so many brands and clients to do private shows for corporate shows for. I was a high flyer. I was at every event you can imagine. I was in all the magazines. I was a hot property in the Malaysian English-speaking music scene. So I had success there. But it didn't match the level of success that I wanted on an international level. And after probably about two years of that success within the Malaysian scene, it all went quiet again. And so once again, I felt like a failure. Because I was hyper-focused on the end game. I completely lost track of the quality of my life that I was living, and how I could measure my success against that.
10:55
I had all the success, I had this wealth, I was making a lot of money, a lot of money, I had massive exposure, which in and of itself was worth a lot of money. But my health was taking a massive hit . It was probably when my addictions first started. And I was getting really good at abandoning who I really am to fit in with who I thought I needed to be. To fit into what I thought society wanted from me, which is to be a rebel, but kind of a safe rebel. There was a lot about myself that I was sharing, but even more than I wasn't. And this is all part and parcel of life without a doubt. But I abandoned myself more and more and more, because that's what I felt. That's what I believed I needed to do in order to fit in with society's measure of success. In order to maintain that, I felt like if I showed up as who I was, and the deeper I got into it, the harder it was going to be for me to show up as who I am because it would mean that maybe I might lose success. Well guess what, with the exposure and the clientele that I had, over time, I did lose that and for different reasons. And as it is I felt I didn't reach the level of success I wanted. And then when the success I really had waned, I felt even more unsuccessful. I felt like a failure. And then I dropped into my addictions. And my gosh, you just got worse and worse and worse and worse.
12:22
Now 15 years on, I look back, and I look at how much success I had on a commercial level and how much success that led me to in terms of the quality of life. When I unplugged from society's measure of success, it gave me an opportunity to re-evaluate what success means to me. How I define success. And that means showing up as me 100%. It means being authentic, it means being okay with not being liked. It means being okay with hearing other people's opinions that maybe don't sound so savoury, but that's okay, because that's about them. It means having a better quality of life. It means having better emotional health, and definitely an optimum or higher quality of mental health.
13:18
And it's a process, it's a process of letting go of who you think you should be, who you think you need to be, in order to be popular, or in order to fit into society's measure of success. To surrender, let it all go. Be vulnerable. Feel the loss of that potential. But it's traded in for something I believe to be far more valuable, which is to be empowered to show up fully as you. Because there's only one of you and me. We're not here to be moulded into a polite, sugary, saccharine, sweet, compromised version of who you are to fit into what society measures as successful. Nah ah.
14:05
You're here to be the most incredible version of who you meant to be. And when you do that, yes, there's going to be a loss of all the people who want you to be something else. But that's beautiful, because that space you create is for all the people who are waiting to meet you as the person you are born to be the most fearlessly authentic version of who you are.
14:28
These are my contemplations around letting go of society's version of success. And I feel like the sooner that you can show up as you. And it's a navigation, it's a process like I said. The faster you're going to magnetise the people who are for you who are going to support you who are your cheerleaders. It's so easy to hyper focus on what you're not, and why you're failing, than focus on what you are and how you're succeeding.
14:56
So for those of you out there who feel like you're never good enough, you're never at that mark of what success is, I invite you to get curious about how do you define success? Is it your definition? Or is it society's definition? Get clear on that first? And if you can't get clear on that, whatever the answer that you're not clear on it, then ask yourself, what does success feel like to me? And look at it as a quality. Don't focus highly on something that's quantifiable that you can measure, like number of record sales, like a profit margin. Yeah, that's all practical. But what's the point of having a high profit margin and millions in the bank, if you are miserable, or if your health is compromised? Okay.
15:42
So get clear on what your own value, your definition of success is, and strategize from there. And you're looking for a cheerleader or community of people who are on the same wavelength as you who are curious and discover their own value system and measure success. Then you come on into the mindfulness playground. Okay.
16:02
You know where to find the links, it's all in melissaindot.com/podcast. It's going to be a beautiful link for you to get into this online community and to join us there.
16:11
I hope you find this helpful. How to let go of society's perception of success is getting curious with what it means to you first. You need to connect with your own inner compass and move from there. And know that you're not alone in getting in with the community as well. That brings us to the end of episode 21. Thank you for your support. Thank you for listening. Thank you for leaning in, learning together by sharing with me your thoughts and feedback. It means the world to me. Until the next episode, stay fearless. Stay curious.
16:53
If you want more, make sure to subscribe so you never miss a new episode every Friday. And please leave a review if you enjoy this episode. Don't forget to send me your curious questions and experiences as inspiration for future episodes. Your anonymity will be respected if that's what you prefer. For more guidance and support, join my emotional healing, mindfulness, and music community over at melissaindot.com. See you next week.
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