Every single day the word ‘success’ makes it’s way into our conversations. What concerns me is we surrender ourselves to the word without challenging how it’s measured.

Measure Success by Default

Exactly when did we default to measure success in money? It’s been a long time for me, because the drive was instilled at an early age. With positive intentions by school, community, home and the media all focused on increasing my potential to earn. Now, as I’ve grown older and hopefully wiser I wonder, is that the only way to measure success?

A Lucky Choice

I know I’m not alone in this struggle. Many people have made a conscious choice to reduce their physical belongings and commitments in order to have a more essential and meaningful life. And there is the sobering reality that others don’t have a choice and measure success as surviving another day. Those whose lives are threatened daily from violence, war, hunger, or disease. These things are existential and can’t be solved by money alone.

We have a choice and I wonder how we can move from being controlled by money as a measure of success and instead choose something a bit more human focused.

How Indie’s Measure Success

We are indie workers, therefore we’ve chosen a life different from others. I wonder, why did you choose the independent professional life? Was it to break through the earnings ceiling of working for someone else? Did you choose freedom to do what you want, when you wanted, with whom you wish? Is your goal to spend more time with your family? Or maybe you were forced into it because you lost your job. As an indie worker we have a unique opportunity to choose how we measure success.

Have we really chosen how we measure success have we selected the default setting?

What would happen if we chose to measure success differently? What if success could be measured by the number of people you helped today? Or maybe we could measure success in smiles, laughs, or hugs? Yes, we need to pay the bills and the mortgage company won’t accept hugs. And you don’t need to use money as the only measure of success. Why not earn a living and measure success by something more?

The Challenge

For one day, rather than money, choose a more meaningful measure of success. Afterward, consider what you’ll do with this new experience.