Measuring Success
Written by Alecs Kakon
Photos by Jen Fellegi
I’ve always struggled with self-confidence. Measuring my self-worth in instances of external recognition, I never tuned into my own notions of what builds me up and makes me feel good. What I’ve noticed is that when I achieve a goal—anything from academic to professional success—I fail to feel any sort of accomplishment or sense of self-growth, unless it is externally praised in some shape or form. I logically understand that these are missed opportunities for feeling fulfilled from within and practicing self-love, but for some reason or other, this is how I’ve got on for most of my life. I work hard, I triumph (so to speak), and it goes uncelebrated. Without stopping to acknowledge my own feelings about my success, I end up deriving zero pleasure from it. Then I question what the point of it all is, why keep going, why reach? I’ve pontificated the source of this unhealthy practice, and have determined one faulty paradigm I’m locked in: understanding the meaning of value. Value is a big word and can signify a lot of things, and so to unpack it, I’ll use two points. First, value as in a commodifiable resource. The erroneous belief that if I keep collecting achievements, I will become worthy. But worthy of what? Admiration? A pay check? Status? Is any of that what I’m after? With sincere knowledge that none of that would fulfill me, I have come to realize that all of my successes have gone unrecognized because the value placed on them has not been determined by me. The second definition of value, and of course the one I am now working toward, is positive self-worth. In order to see and reflect the value of my work, I must practice the daily ritual of self-compassion. That way, when I achieve moments of success, the value of said accomplishment will fill my bucket rather than be sieved through. Talking to Mira brought a lot of this to light. Confident, self-possessed, and free of external constructs, Mira has developed a definition of success that evolves as boundlessly as her perennial self-growth.
Born and raised in Montreal, Mira lived two opposing realities all throughout her lifetime. Exposed to financial prosperity, her family at large lived the conventional definition of wealth and happiness. Challenging her own upbringing, her mother resisted the belief that money was the identifying factor of success, and retreated to raise Mira with the bohemian notion that community and creativity were the foundation of happiness and authentic living. While Mira drew immense understanding from both worlds, she ultimately realized that the tension between the two existed not in the conflict that made them distinct, but rather in the basic tenants that made them very much the same. Both rejected the other, and therefore lacked the harmony of the big picture. Living in a vacuum, each of the ideologies functioned: one saw the outside world as the defining factor of success, neglecting the self, while the other cultivated the self, negating the operational world we live in. “Ambition was intimately tied to wealth on the one hand, yet on the other, I had this shame around money,” Mira explains. “I was exposed to a lot of struggle and financial instability, and even though I never had to be curious about how the other side lived, I did spend a lot of my childhood figuring out which side I identified with.” Always celebrated as an individual and encouraged to challenge limiting beliefs, Mira realized pretty early on that she didn’t have to alternate between both worlds, instead, she could integrate each of their pillars and create her own reality. “I am both and I am neither,” Mira explains. “I choose what I am and I am finding a new breed of eccentricity that drives my success and determines my value.”
Mira’s capacity to dream is limitless as her abundant mindset opens her world to all of its possibilities. Rather than coming from a place of resistance, she has created a new space charged with positivity and resilient energy. Acknowledging that for some, success is intimately tied to compensation, Mira explains that she “never saw success and money to be one in the same,” Mira explains. “Money is a neutral concept until you add a charge. It is pure to begin with, and for me, my success is driven by value, not greed.” Finding fulfillment from within, Mira’s relationship with success fosters self-growth, self-love, and self-worth. Prioritizing social impact and showing up in meaningful ways, Mira aligns her values with the idea of wealth, however for her, wealth manifests in different ways. “I have visions of what I want in my life. I see the home I’ll live in, the trips I’ll take, and I have no shame in wanting to be financially stable, because I believe in contributing with wealth and all that that entails.”
I’ve come to understand that value is a construct that needs to be defined time and again as a part of the process of self-edification. Looking at success from an external elevation will always leave me in a position of feigned fulfillment. By removing validation from the equation, there is room for true fulfillment. Living at the centre of two opposing worlds has a certain advantage in perspective as Mira was able to extract the lessons she needed in order to forge her own path. With acute awareness, she also figured out that the two seemingly opposite worlds were in actual reality two ends of the same string. Funnelling her understanding of the world through the binary reality she lived in, Mira departed from the dichotomous messaging, and became quite in tune with her own belief system. Living a life replete with bliss, contentment and wonder, Mira embodies success in the shape of meaning and purpose. She is what true wisdom looks like in this age of information.
