Measuring Your Success

High-Performance Executive Newsletter: Greater success with less stress.

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The three essentials for high performance are neuroregulation (to get and stay calm), clearing negative self-talk and the beliefs that create it (including imposter syndrome), and creating new success habits.

This week, we're looking at personally measuring success.

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Measuring Your Success

How do you measure your success? I don’t mean hitting goals and meeting KPIs; I mean, what makes you feel like you’re successful?

I ran a poll last week with this question, choosing the usual suspects of success measurement: financial via income and lifestyle,  or impact, contribution and legacy, or growth and personal development. The ‘other’ category was wide and varied, naturally. It included non-work measures of success such as family, relationships, spiritual development, health, sport and fitness.

As you can see from the poll, there’s no one way to define success, either for ourselves or for other people.

Even within each category, there is great variability in how each of us measures success and considers ourselves to be successful. When you understand how you measure success personally, you put yourself in a powerful position to create your life deliberately.

Awareness

The first exercise I give new clients is to review their past successes and check whether they felt that was a success internally. It is essential to know what drives us and why.

Several different patterns can emerge.

Some people feel disconnected from the event, knowing logically that it was a success, but not getting any sense of satisfaction from it.

Some feel self-critical and focus on what they ‘should have done better’; some even feel like failures despite their successes. Like winning a silver medal in the Olympics, if it’s not first place or perfect, then they feel it wasn’t enough.

Some people feel deeply uncomfortable being visible when they have a success. Here the pattern is that their success now means that others will expect this high performance from them again in the future, and they’re worried they won’t be able to meet those expectations.

These different patterns are clues that show your beliefs about your success and what that means for you.

Origins

From awareness, we look at where these beliefs came from. When you were born, you had no concept of success or failure, performance, or expectations.

Every belief you have about yourself has an origin: a logical, rational idea that you have learned and integrated. Even though these beliefs are 100% learned, they are typically unconscious, and we just operate from them automatically.

If you list your beliefs about what defines success for you, you may notice that not all of them are as logical as when we first learned them.

One executive client defined her success in terms of career growth and personal development. However, she also believed that she should be the perfect mother with a spotless house. We discovered that her mother was the role model for her belief that success comes from the household, which is not untypical. However, her mother had no job outside the home and focused her time and effort on cleaning and cooking. And gardening and sewing and activity in a slew of school events.

Consequently, this exec was trying to achieve success appropriate to two full-time roles. She was trying to achieve her own definition of success and her mother's at the same time. She was exhausting herself in the process, and always felt vaguely dissatisfied.

In another example, my mother defines success financially, whereas I define my success through the positive impact I have on people’s lives. Before I separated out the origins of my success beliefs, I had a constant internal battle trying to achieve both, or having to choose between the two – which would have always made me feel that I had failed in some way.

Consider your definitions of success. Where did those beliefs come from? From whom?

Letting Beliefs Go

Which success beliefs are genuinely yours, and which are hand-me-downs from parents, teachers or peers?

Once you have identified your success beliefs and their origins, you are in a powerful position to decide which ones to keep.

Keep those that serve you, support you, and align with your values. Keep those beliefs about success that make you feel good when you reach them.

All other beliefs you can let go. Hand them back to their persons of origin. ‘Thank you for that, but it doesn’t work for me’.

When you have pruned out measures of success that don’t serve you, you are left with beliefs that are aligned with who you really are and what you’re excited to achieve in life.

There are no conflicts, and your energy is completely focused on what will be a satisfying career journey for you.

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What I've loved this week:

I’ve bought a lovely dress to wear at the 2024 Business Book Awards black-tie dinner next month. I bought it on the Internet (my first mistake?), but the size is a little small. Quelle surprise! And, well, I have put on weight this year too. Ahem, this is maybe the whole problem!

So this month, I’m dieting. But doing it with science! I’m using my wearable tracker (Oura ring) to monitor my sleep and exercise, alongside the Cronometer app to track my food intake; nutrients, protein, carbs, fat, and calories. Then, I weigh myself and track weight loss vs food intake and exercise. I really (really!) don’t like how my body feels when I’m losing weight, it makes me grumpy. But the tech, tracking, optimising for results – well that makes it all a little bit of fun!

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An action step you can do this week …

Three simple steps:

Identify your beliefs of success

Discover where each came from

Hand back any that don’t add you your high performance and happiness

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I’ll take more of a look at success in future issues.

Do subscribe and share!

I'm Dr Tara Halliday, specialist Imposter Syndrome Coach and best-selling author. I run the 5-star Inner Success programme for executives; the most effective, proven method to eliminate imposter syndrome for good.

I’m running a research project this October on imposter syndrome. I’m training 30 coaches to facilitate Inner Success (to show it’s not a ‘therapist effect’). These experienced coaches require confidential case-study clients to take through the Inner Success programme, fully supervised by me.

If you’re interested in experiencing this impressive transformation at a massively reduced price (because it’s research), click here to get the details: https://bit.ly/2024IS-CaseStudy

Have an excellent, refreshing and recharging weekend!

Tara

P.S. Thank you for reading to the end of the newsletter, I appreciate your interest and attention!