As we start the new year and perhaps consider our plans and resolution for the next 12 months (and beyond) it might do to consider what success really looks like.
In our work lives we have had successes which are based on some fairly objective measures: the corner office, promotions, raises, benefits, power, control, the list goes on and on, depending on what kind of work you do.
I never had a corner office exactly, but when this is what's outside your office every day it certainly feels like you're on top of the world!
We all knew, more or less, what the metrics were and we used them to measure our accomplishments. While they may not have been nearly as objective as we wanted to believe they were, they were an accepted shorthand for "success."
Now, with the stroke of a pen signing our retirement papers, all those day-to-day standards have disappeared. We no longer have the ready-made corporate standards by which to judge ourselves.
It can be argued - and I agree - that these are artificial constructs, that real success is measured in the personal and intangible emotions that define a life: love, happiness, contentment.
But like them or loathe them, they were the basic definition of our working life and they are gone.
What will you put in their place?
For some people the answer is easy: they define their success in material terms. A big house, or a luxurious apartment or condo. New cars with all the bells and whistles. Household help like cleaners and gardeners. Vacation homes in exotic locales. For them, these outward symbols of financial success are the measure of their lives, and they are content with them.
My dream house always includes a pool - and someone else to maintain it!
For others their success is defined by their families. The children who are successful in their education and careers. "My son, the doctor," is a cliché, but like all clichés it arose from continual real-world usage. (Full disclosure, my son is a lawyer and a college professor, and my daughter holds multiple degrees. Make of that what you will.) These are the proud grandparents whose social media is chock full of grandchildren's pictures, with captions boasting of their accomplishments, their cute comments, and their intellectual brilliance. For them this is the ultimate success, and more power to them. We need people who will raise and nurture the next generations.
But if you're embarking on your next act with creativity as your driving force you will need some new standards. You will need to re-define success for yourself and your new circumstances.
It's time for you to write your own success story. You can choose how this story ends, and change it however works for you.
Over the years I have talked at length with other writers who have had to create their own definitions of success, and for most of us those definitions have had to be revised again and again as the publishing industry changed around us, and as our own goals evolved over time.
I am sure it is the same in every creative field. For me, when I started writing seriously 20-plus years ago the ultimate goal was a book contract with a major publisher. It was a naive choice, but typical of a writer early in her career. I couldn't imagine anything more than getting that elusive contract.
That goal was however completely unrealistic. Not for the reason you might think, that it was far too lofty - in fact, my first contract with a major publisher was for three books - but because it was both far too low, and completely unrealistic.
Too low is pretty easy to deal with, if you think about it. You achieve one goal and you set another, higher, goal. It's what you've done all your life. When you were thirteen you wanted to kiss a boy or a girl. When that finally happened you wanted something more. When you were sixteen you wanted a driver's license and when you got it you started scheming about how to get your own car. You landed your first job and started figuring out how to get a better one. It's a pattern that's familiar to all of us.
But the other part, the unrealistic part, that's a lot harder to see. You may have encountered this in your working life. There are, after all, only so many supervisor jobs, and manager spots. There's only a handful of regional managers, and even fewer vice presidents, even in a huge multinational corporation.
There isn't much space at the top. Which is why we have to decide for ourselves what success means for us.
In publishing (the example which I am most familiar with) there are, or were, a finite number of books published per year. That's changed with the advent of indie publishing (like I'm doing with this series), but it was the reality when I set that first goal. I could have written the ultimate, absolute best all-time murder mystery, but I would never have sold it to Harlequin because they only published romance. Scholastic, the children's book publisher, was not going to buy a spy thriller set in Cold War Berlin. And every publisher had a limited number of slots available. Once they were full they weren't likely to buy your story, no matter how good it was.
In short, the goal of selling to a specific publisher, or any publisher, was out of my control. It wasn't that I couldn't hope to achieve that fabled contract, it was that I could not do anything to bring about that success.
I was defining my own success by the actions and caprices of other people, people who didn't know me or give a damn about my dreams and goals and aspirations. I had given those faceless first readers and editors on the other side of the country the power to decide if I was successful.
Instead I had to define my success, set my goals, and determine my own criteria for achievement. I had to set goals that I alone could control. Could I make that contract happen? Absolutely not, that was in the hands of other people.
But I could set a goal to finish writing that first book. I could set a goal of attending a writing conference to learn more about my craft. I could set a goal of reading a trade journal every month to become better educated about writing and publishing. I could set a goal to write a certain number of words or pages each day, or week, or month.
I could set goals that were about me, and that I could meet without depending on other people.
The covers for my foreign editions, which I published myself. These covers are a concrete reminder that I successfully wrote and published this series, and that there will be more books to come. And I can define that as success!
That is the ultimate freedom that comes from the combination of retirement and creativity. We can set our own goals, create our own definition of success, without depending on anyone else to define it for us.
Retirement gives us control over our creativity and our sense of accomplishment. That's the ultimate freedom.