Whether you rebel against it or not, society has conditioned us to measure success against a rigid set of metrics.
Case in point – I had my second baby 18 months ago and here’s what I thought success looked like:
- Exclusively breastfeed for six months (but ideally two years).
- Focus on rest during (an eight-week) maternity leave.
- Lose ALL the baby weight (and then some).
In reality, postpartum looked more like this:
- I breastfed but relied on formula supplementation.
- LOL maternity leave when you run your own business and have another kid.
- I’ve barely lost five pounds (which could honestly be the pot of coffee I just finished).
By these metrics, I’ve already failed motherhood. C+ at best.
Now, I know better than to grade myself on these merits. But even still, I frequently catch myself in these striving loops—falling short of what I know to be false canon.
And guess what? We do this in business too.
In business, we’re conditioned to see success as:
- YoY growth (and knowing that YoY stands for “year over year”).
- Having employees (or plans to hire them).
- Increasing market share (with eventual world domination, mwahahahaha).
In my business:
- I’ve had 10 years of “undulations.”
- junebird creative has one employee, me.
- Just thinking about market share is exhausting.
Judges? Again, by these metrics, I’m failing.
See, (cue shark music) somewhere along the way, we conflated someone else’s metrics with our own definition of success. We measure against models that don’t respect our own process. We do our damndest to contort ourselves into contrived narratives. We believe that if we don’t hit certain benchmarks, others will catalog us lower along the prevailing rank-and-file spectrum of success whether or not that ranking actually reflects our true success.
SHARK!
(Now, true to television drama “cliffhanger” strategy, we’re going to pause for what smells like a commercial break but isn’t, I promise.)
According to Mel Robbins in The Let Them Theory (and if you read nothing else this year, I urge you to read—or listen to—this book), people are going to think what they are going to think. And your job is to let them. Then, you’re going to let me.
In truth, the “let me” part of the equation is what I’d been missing. I (try to) practice “letting it go” and “radical acceptance,” but what I didn’t realize was the power in making the next move: taking back the narrative.
In order to take back the narrative, I had to figure out whence it had been taken.
(and now back to the show)
Here’s the thing: metrics are just numbers. And numbers without a story—without context—mean nothing. Yet somehow, most metrics have narratives associated with them. What we don’t realize is that we have the power to drive the narrative (and now the commercial break makes sense).
We’ve been conditioned to go from metric → story → analysis. But what if we flipped the order? What if we went from metric → analysis → story?
What would unlock in ourselves, our relationships, our businesses, if we chose our narrative after we looked at the data? And maybe (gasp) decided to choose a different metric?
Success is not a one-size-fits-all equation. We don’t need to meet someone else’s definition of success—we need to tell the story behind our metrics.
Motherhood? My children are healthy and they know they are loved. I prioritize connection before correction. And I’m strong AF because I run (a lot) so I can be present for them.
My business? I know my strengths (and it’s NOT people management). Sometimes growth looks like creating space, saying no, or finally writing that newsletter over financial gains and increased market share.
When we let our success be measured against the default story of a metric, we surrender our autonomy in deciding the story we want to tell.
Because metrics alone don’t determine success—we do.