What is a successful life?

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, of late, on success.

And I can’t help thinking we have got things wrong.

Success “out there” in the world feels like a parade of external signs and symbols of having “made it.” What car you drive, how much you earn, how many academic achievements or career milestones you can name, how many followers, how many likes, how little body fat, what can you lift, where did you go on holiday, how attractive you are perceived to be, how productive your day has been, even how stressed you are…all external signifiers of value.

Outputs. Pushing. Hustling. Possessions. Surface image.

When someone walks into my therapy room (or joins me in a Zoom session) they can look like a picture of success. And believe me, I have had many clients who you would meet and believe they “have it all.”

But “in here”, in the safety of therapy, that success is unmasked and the true self can emerge.

We all know this right?

The famous and beautiful and rich and accomplished – we read about their addictions, their mental health struggles, their suicides, their toxic relationships.

And yet, we all feel enmeshed in this spiderweb of external success.

Let’s sit for a minute and just let this land – how much of our headspace and days are filled with worries and self-criticism about who are are/what we are not/are we enough/what aren’t we doing? Even though we also know that when you “have it all” you can feel also like crap and hate yourself and your life.

It all feels a bit messed up, if I’m honest.

So, what does this mean for success?

I believe that success is about a life lived well.

And for you to live your life well, you can only live it for you.

According to your own values, your loves, your interests, your secret joys. Choosing to integrate them in your hours and days and years.

And to live in partnership with yourself – accepting all of who you are (the breadth of you – the shadows, the struggling parts; alongside the easy to like). Feeling times of ease in yourself, comfort in your own skin, a quiet pride in who you are, hell; what about an exuberant celebration of yourself??

What I am really talking about here, is feeling at home in yourself.

If I could name true wellbeing it would be that – to feel at home in yourself.

This stuff might sound easy.

It’s easy to write.

And yet it’s so hard to live and for many people requires healing (e.g. through therapy) to tune into themselves and to heal wounds of low self-worth created over the years.

I know, because I am one of those people too. And I work with people everyday who are doing this work.

But perhaps things might be easier if we could stop getting success so wrong. If as a society we talked more honestly about success. If we could be clearer in ourselves about the success we are aiming for. To begin to redefine what success means. And that it’s not about the external but rather it’s ALL about the internal; the inner experience of self and how this can help us find our way to our own life well-lived.

I’ll end with an invitation for you to make some time to reflect on what success means to you.

Can you see what you have been taught, or learnt along the way, about what success is? What do you think of these ideas of success, as you draw them into awareness? Do you want to keep them or let them go?

Can you imagine what a life might feel like (and look like) where you define your own success? How would you feel inside? What does success feel like to you? And what might change in your life if you could claim this success or move more closely to it?

I’d love to hear from you and what you think about this redefining of success. And what it means to you.

Just a reminder that you can also hear more from me and we can connect on Instagram @emily.mccoy.shares

And you can download my free, Claim You resource on my website.

Sending love,

Emily