Ever felt like you are forever in a race, running on a treadmill but not getting anywhere? Your life treadmill does not have a button to slow down or pause? I have been in one of these races and had a burn out. As a kid I used to hear about this famous “rat race” adults participate in. Nobody told me it is actually not one race. There are n number of races and if you are not smart you start to try running all of them. Try asking a 10 year old if he/she can run two races simultaneously. You will no doubt get a response along the lines of “are you crazy”. Somehow as we grow older, we start trying to achieve the impractical. Instead of running a race where we have defined our success and the prize is feeling content, we decide to run all races except our own.

Being successful gives us pride and a sense of achievement. Being content gives us that warm fuzzy feeling of being happy and satisfied – the ‘I am happy being me, I am happy where I am in life’ feeling. It gives us confidence and I believe takes us out of unnecessary rat races. So, does being successful lead to being content and vice versa? I do not quite believe that achieving one will naturally lead to achieving the other. In my experience this is largely to do with how we define success. Five bedroom house, luxury cars, designer bags and clothes, job tittle, settling overseas, salary – these are some of the common things listed when you ask a person what is their definition of success. When you dig a bit deeper it is not uncommon to find that more often than not these success criteria are based on comparison of one’s life to their siblings, friends or colleagues. Instead of defining our own criteria we end up adopting what others define as success.  It starts quite early on. In school you want to be get grades than student X. How many times have you heard a student say I scored a B+ but next year I will aim for an A? Not as often as you hear I have to score better than X. The neighbour’s kid has taken up Science in class 11, plays tennis and can play piano. Must say, I am glad that the mind set on Arts and Commerce being taken up by the intellectually weak is changing in India.

Did I hear you say ‘but that is healthy competition Dee?’…yes healthy competition but does it also end up defining what is success? I am a big fan of healthy competition…keyword being ‘healthy’. It brings out the best of talent and abilities in people. The challenge is when this healthy competition starts to become one of the many rat races and we start defining success as being first in these races. Defining one’s own success is a personal journey. There is no right or wrong. Achieving that success should make you feel content. Just because you did not migrate overseas or do not have a chief of ‘something’ job tittle does not necessarily make you unsuccessful.

The universe gave me a few jolts to understand this elusive success. When I just graduated finding a job and paying my own bills gave me a crazy adrenaline rush. Albeit a small role I walked with my head held high and gave my job 110% every day. Job tittle, company, the fact that I was not doing any earth shattering technical role did not matter. My definition of success was to be an independent woman living life on my terms. Once that was achieved my next success criteria was to grow professionally, take up something more challenging. I landed another job. Again, the company, job tittle – none of this mattered. I loved my job, had a sense of achievement and self-satisfaction. During my first two jobs in the industry I was defining my dreams, my success goals and running my race. The question pondered was “is today’s Dee better than the Dee last year?”

My third job was again a step into something more challenging. One of the best attributes I had acquired during my University days and early career was to be comfortable with who I am and where I am at in life. I did not want to jump into any and every rat race. I would choose my race and give you a damn fine competition. This surprised people at my new organisation. I was labelled “weird”. I guess when we do not understand something or someone, the easiest thing to do is put a “weird” label. I managed to hold on to my traits but eventually the culture around me got to me. Instead of my own success I was chasing job titles, pay, team size, expanding my role. God only knows who defined these benchmarks but it was nauseating and slowly killing me from the inside. I firmly believe when you do something that is against your intrinsic nature, your body starts to react and change as well. From the happy go lucky, see the good in all I turned into a stress ball. Finally a number of factors threw me off the edge. Common sense prevailed and I realised this is not me and this is not my race.

With the nightmare finally over, I picked up the pieces and decided to start all over again. I was still quite hung over on how others define success and took up another job in a haste. Only difference was that this time I figured out fairly quickly that the job was more to ensure others see me as successful. This is not what I wanted, this is not what would make me feel content. Yes, Dee was slowly returning! I resigned explaining that the job was not for me and it would be unfair to the organisation because I would not give it my 100%. With all the wonderful people surrounding me, I was recommended for another vacancy. Before my first interview I had some time off to do some heavy duty self reflection. It did not take long for me to realise that in the past 5 years I had tasted some success but there were only fleeting moments of being content. Sundays had been spent sulking because Monday was around the corner, I had not seen family and slowly I had stopped catching up with my friends. I missed being able to pick up a book without a thousand thoughts racing through my mind, I missed enjoying a movie or cooking without constantly having work on my mind or worrying about which new shining poster boy/girl of idiocy is plotting to ruin my career. Instead of investing in how to be better at my job I was investing all my energy in what’s on my manager’s mind, who is plotting with whom, how do I get to the next grade, next promotion. It was not my race and it was exhausting!!

Having moved on, my definition of success is chasing an area of work I enjoy, ensuring I catch up with family and friends more than once a year, going on a holiday with my ladies and ticking off items from my bucket list. What others think and say does matter…we are only human! To that I would suggest reminding yourself of the story of the father, son and the donkey.

Life is short and the only competition is with yourself. This is your journey and yours alone, your book to write. My 2 cents on this is to chase being content. Define your success on what will make you content. Instead of looking outside, looking inside yourself to find your success milestones. My father telling me about his first job, pigging out in front of the TV with my brother, coffee at Lynn Mall or just lazing around in the living room with my flatmates are some of the most successful and content moments. It is these moments that helped me understand that I do not need to be a CEO, I do not need a killer size 0 body and I do not need a big house, expensive cars or holidays.