Keep going anyway

Wondering about success and whether it matters is a chance to move away from believing that there is a certain way to succeed.

I’m sitting in a very large bookstore café, my eyes wandering over the tall bookshelves blooming with colorful covers and spines. Bundled pages, paragraphs, sentences, and letters, imagined and articulated by writers expressing themselves. Writers who worked hard to figure out what they wanted to say through carefully crafted ideas, opinions, descriptions, and facts. These shelves hold so much potential and represent the many authors’ accomplishments.

Bookstore shelves are full of hard work and a certain kind of success: visible, concrete, seemingly easy to quantify. I don’t know if I’ll ever have that experience, though I have dreamed of and worked towards writing a book. I imagine that having a book published would feel monumental, but our culture is drawn even bigger and flashier versions of success.

The way that our society sees success is in important achievements, making a lot of money, being well known, or having the “good” things. These superficial measurements focus on a select group who are visibly achieving these aims, leaving the rest of us to wonder if what we are doing matters.

It is easy to see that the way we look at success doesn’t encompass the full scope of what makes a wonderful life, meaningful work, or supportive relationships. And I know that deep, lasting satisfaction and fulfillment don’t come from selling a book, getting a promotion, or creating something that everyone wants. I understand that it is more important and worthwhile to believe in myself, but it’s hard to abandon the idea of success that comes from other people appreciating and valuing what I do.

When I think about what I should do to promote my work or what direction I want to go as a writer, my mind turns towards all the other writers who keep typing away despite not having the “growth” and popularity that some writers do. My work rarely reaches a large audience and there have been many times when I’ve let go of a creative project because it seemed like it wasn’t going anywhere.

But now I want to join everyone who keeps going anyway, who writes what is special to them, creating beauty and magic and ideas that open minds, whether or not anyone is reading. I want to learn more about success from the perspective of all of us who are on the fringes or perhaps far outside what is typically seen as successful. There are legions of us not becoming rich and famous, perhaps struggling to describe how we spend our days, continuing to do the work we love without major recognition or remuneration.

We all want to believe that we are doing valuable work but, for some of us, it can be hard to ignore the voices of doubt and diminishment, even if they are never spoken aloud. When we forget that we can create our own measure of success it is harder to appreciate all of the ways that we are already living the amazing lives we dream of. And we are still valuable and worthy even when we have not reached goals, achievements, and milestones that are easily recognizable as success.

In this podcast episode, Claire Venus and Amie McNee talk about creative people having so much freedom to experiment, to do different things, to show up as they are and with what they need. We don’t have to stick to someone else’s formula or to follow “best practices” unless is best for us. But I often feel like the freedom to experiment and to drop what doesn’t feel right is reserved for those who have already achieved great things and who don’t have to keep trying to get there. If you are a well known artist or writer your creativity will be seen and appreciated even if it happens inconsistently or is completely unlike anything you have done before.

Those of us who are not so visible often hear the advice that we should be consistent so our audience knows what to expect. While this makes sense, I’ve realized that if I keep trying to do what seems like the right or best thing, I’m forcing myself to prioritize a schedule or formula rather than what works for me. Lacking conventional success means my newsletter grows incredibly slowly even if I stick to a schedule. So why not feel free to do it my own way?

Success can, and probably should, be different for each of us. The more that I have learned about living, parenting, creating, being human, the more I can see that leaving behind other people’s ideas of what I should do is essential to becoming my fullest self. As I explore what success means to me I can see that what is most important is trusting my own internal compass, finding my north star. This can be so difficult because it requires believing in myself rather than adopting the familiar conventional ideas about success. But it is also freeing and motivating because I don’t have to give up when I can’t meet someone else’s idea of what is worthwhile and valuable.

If I were to pull one of those colorful books off the bookstore shelf, it would hold the possibility of wonder, delight, new information and perspectives. The pages probably won’t show the slow plodding, the uncertainty, the sparks and flashes of ideas, the paragraphs deleted, the trying again that the writer experienced. I can only see the final product, the perceived success. There is so much more creative work out there that never comes near a store shelf, bound neatly for presentation. The glimpses of success we see or reach for don’t show everything it takes create the things we make visible to the world.

I have more to share about success in future newsletters. I’m curious if you ever think about success? Does it matter to you? What, if anything, makes you feel successful?

Warmly,

Anna