If Your Previous Definition of Success Stops Working, This is How You Figure Out What to do Next
You have the dataset and the patterns are all in there
When people are stuck, they often try to solve the problem only at the surface level. They update their résumé. They look for openings. They of course network. They try to sound impressive. All of that may be necessary.
But it may not answer a deeper question: What is the thread of my life? What have I learned? What do I believe because of what I have lived? What kind of work brings out my best? What kind of contribution am I actually trying to make?
Early in life, there often isn't enough data to actually answer these questions.
At 22 - you are trying to finish your education and …
Building skills
Trying new things
Taking opportunities
Making mistakes
Earning money
You cannot detect patterns yet. Pattern detection is hard because the sample size is small.
But later, after 10, 15, 20 years, something interesting happens. You begin to notice patterns:
the same frustrations recurring
the same strengths appearing in different contexts
the same mistakes
the same kinds of people you work well with
the same environments that energize and/or drain you
the same responsibilities finding their way to you even if you’re not asking for them
At that point, ignoring the pattern becomes difficult. In other words, once enough life data accumulates, your own life becomes a dataset - IF you are ready to look at the details and examine the patterns. You must pay attention to it - the experiences, emotions, successes, failures, highs, lows - and you have lived and gathered over the years.
Then the real question becomes:
Given everything I now know about myself, what will happen if I choose Option A vs. B?
This is not rumination.
It’s not idle navel gazing.
You are genuinely looking for ways to make the best decisions and optimize your wins.
You’re trying to predict the best chance of success given the different paths in front of you now.
This is when you realize you not only need to pay attention to the data, but you also need your OWN definition of success.
Which might be very different from the society’s or your peers or any other definition of success.
The case that definition of success does depend on your life story
So how does one come up with his/her own definition of success? A definition of success is never born in a vacuum. Same with status. “Success” and “status” may mean money. They may mean excellence. They may mean visibility. They may mean fame. They may mean belonging. Escape from shame.
For some, money means safety. Maybe it means dignity. Maybe it means freedom. Maybe it means never being dependent again. Maybe it means proving someone wrong. Maybe it means being untouchable.
Your definition of success may look objective, but the emotional meaning of success is often biographical.
Two people can want the same thing — say, a high-paying role — for very different reasons.
One wants money because it buys freedom.
Another wants money because they are terrified of falling.
Another wants money because they enjoy winning.
Another wants money because they feel worthless without external proof.
Starting out, every person defines success simply and rationally:
I want to make money.
I want to be respected.
I want to support my family.
These are all legitimate. But later, after a few rounds of reality, they may start to ask something very different. Why is this so exhausting to me? Why do I hate working in this job or position? Do I believe in it enough to persevere? Why does this still not feel like enough? What am I trying to prove?
A person can absolutely define success without understanding their life story. But they may not know if or whether that definition of success is merely borrowed, protective, defensive, compensatory, or self-endorsed until life tests it… and life will test it, no question.
In other words…
If and when your previous definition of success stops working, how will you figure out what to do next?
The even more practical reason to understand your life story
Without some understanding of your life, you may keep choosing goals that look good externally but are wrong for your actual operating system. In other words, understanding yourself may or may not define success for you, but it almost always determines whether a borrowed definition of success will hold up under pressure.
That costs years. Years. Not one bad job. But many “not-quite-right-and-horribly-draining” jobs.
A person can chase:
high-status roles
high money
impressive titles
elite companies
what their peers admire
what the market currently rewards
And end up doing work that slowly deadens them, distorts them, and makes them mediocre.
When does your life-story (i.e., your life "data") understanding become really necessary?
It becomes necessary when you see the same repeated patterns are occurring over and over and over:
Repeated patterns that become impossible to ignore - What deeper understanding of your life story helps with
You keep getting prestigious roles but feel empty - i.e., you need to distinguish external success from actual fit.
You keep choosing the same kind of bad boss/team - i.e., you need to identify what you tolerate or misread or accept when you shouldn't.
You are capable but cannot explain what you want - i.e., you need to find the through-line.
You keep under-claiming your work - i.e., you need to understand fear, shame, or lack of ownership.
You keep over-performing in roles you dislike - i.e., you need to see where you competence is masking misfit.
You keep avoiding visibility - i.e., you must understand what visibility means to you.
You are successful but restless - i.e., you must ask whether you are playing the wrong game.
You are stuck after a layoff/failure - i.e., you must rebuild your identity beyond title given by organizations.
Everything looks “fine” but feels entirely wrong - i.e., you must separate momentum from your own intentional choice.
How do you know it will give clarity and isn’t just navel-gazing?
If reflection produces only more reflection, it is probably navel-gazing. If it produces clearer choices, better boundaries, better language, or more courageous action, it is clarity. Often, this requires feedback from others.
Clarity will help you get to operational truth.
From operational truth, it is just one more (easy) step to action.
This is one thing I would like to emphasize above all - when you have clarity, the next steps are clear.
Not saying that the next steps are easy to do. In fact, they may be really difficult to do, but it's absolutely clear what they are.
How to extract operational truth? Use your life's data.
Take the example of Doug Conant, the former CEO of Campbell Soup Company, who has a deceptively simple leadership idea: your life story is your leadership story. At first, this sounds almost too soft for the corporate world. But Conant’s point is deeper. Leadership is shaped by our failures, our disappointments, recoveries, our hidden fears, loyalties, formative relationships, our moments of failure, and our hard-won beliefs about people.
This idea became real for Conant after a painful professional setback.
Earlier in his career, he was fired.
He was in his early thirties, with a family, mortgage, an identity built around progress and competence. Then, suddenly, his position was eliminated. Like many people who lose a job, he felt blindsided. He felt not only the anxiety of unemployment, but also the deeper wound of humiliation and disorientation.
At that point, Conant met a mentor and outplacement counselor named Neil MacKenna. MacKenna asked Conant to do something far more difficult than updating his resume: write down his life story. Not just his career history. His life. The experiences that shaped him. The people who influenced him. The patterns and values, disappointments, achievements, and turning points.
It was a leadership exercise.
The reason is that most people do not lead from abstract principles. They lead from internalized experience.
In Conant’s case, being fired became one of the turning points of his life. MacKenna began their meetings with a question: “How can I help?” That question stayed with Doug Conant. It was not just someone being polite. It communicated presence, respect, and usefulness. It suggested that leadership begins not with authority, but with service. Later, Conant became known for a leadership style that emphasized honoring people, listening carefully, and creating a culture where people felt seen. The seeds of Conant’s style were were clarified during a period of personal vulnerability.
For Conant, this reflection helped transform a layoff from an ending into a source of clarity. It helped him see that leadership was not a performance. The work was not to become someone else’s image of a leader. The work was to become more fully himself.
A résumé flattens a person. It turns a life into titles, dates, employers, and bullet points. But a leadership story restores depth. It asks: What formed you? What tested you? What did you learn about people? What promises did you make to yourself? What do you refuse to repeat? What do you now feel responsible for?
Because leadership is not just achievement.
It is judgment about people.
A leader who has felt unseen in his life may become unusually attentive to recognizing others. A leader who has been humiliated may reproduce that humiliation or become determined never to do that to another person. A leader who has survived instability may value steadiness. A leader who has been helped at a low moment may build a leadership philosophy around helping others. A person who has been underestimated may become the leader who notices competence in others.
These traits are invisible on a résumé. They do not appear as bullet points. They are not listed under “skills.” But they shape how a person makes decisions, how they treat people, what they pay attention to, what they refuse to repeat, and what kind of environment they try to build around them. This is key.
Leadership is formed quietly, through what we have absorbed, suffered, noticed, and chosen not to pass on. The material of leadership is personal experience that has been examined deeply to become useful to others.
So what does that mean? Like Doug Conant, we must write down and examine our life story. Everything we have done. The success, the failures, the learnings, the difficulties, the highs, the lows, and repeated patterns. Thriven was built for precisely this reason for once you have that dynamic dashboard in front of you - you will see what you might have missed otherwise. You’ll see your strengths, your weaknesses, your blind spots - all of which will never make it to your resume, but are critical in determining every professional decision you make.
So, the strongest reason to understand your life story, i.e., your "dataset"
Your life story is not for the employer.
Do employers care?
No, not really.
You understand your life story not because employers care, but because you need to know what kind of work, power, success, and responsibility you can pursue - without betraying yourself, or destroying yourself, or burning out, or feeling empty, or harming others.
Your life story and all the "data" in it - your work, your successes, your failures, your highs and lows - is for your benefit.
It is for your own judgment.
It’s because you have to play your best game using your strengths. You have to be the best possible version of yourself.
Because your nearest and dearest relationships (especially the one you have with yourself throughout your entire life) depend on it.