The Pioneers Club

Reclaiming Success: Defining It On Your Own Terms

• Monika Lerch & Patrick Öffl • Season 2 • Episode 3

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Welcome to our latest podcast episode, where we delve deep into the questions surrounding success: 

What does it truly mean to be successful? When do you feel fulfilled and proud of what you've accomplished ? And perhaps most importantly, how do you know when you're truly succeeding?

Faced with social pressures and preconceived notions of what success should look like, we discuss the dangers of adopting superficial or inauthentic definitions of success. We explore why finding your own authentic definition of success is not only "a nice to have", but actually essential in achieving personal fulfillment and lasting success. And we look at some practical principles and strategies that will help you discover your personal measure of success.

You'll learn:
2:23 - This episode's focus - Success On Your Terms
4:41 - Why you need to ask yourself, What does it mean to be truly successful? and the need to look beyond just results
9:06 - Why it's important to find your own definition of success instead of adopting other's definition
17:42 - Possible challenges & difficulties in finding your own Why & definition of success?
23:38 - Where to start in defining success on your own terms
29:36 - Start defining success on your terms in your FREE 1:1 Breakthrough Session with Monika (https://calendly.com/monikalerch-sessionbooking/free-breakthrough-session)



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Your Host:
Monika Lerch
https://www.monikalerch.com/
Linkedin: /in/monikalerch/
Instagram: @themonikalerch

Your Co-Host:
Patrick Öffl
https://www.amikifilms.com/
Linkedin: /in/patrickoeffl/
Instagram: @patrickoeffl

Monika This is the Pioneers Club podcast. 

Patrick The community podcast for driven entrepreneurs and leaders. 

Monika Here you can connect with like minded people, create a sense of belonging and gain more agency in your daily life. 

Hi, my name is Monika and I'm your host. I help impact-driven freelancers, entrepreneurs and leaders live their full potential and go from feeling overwhelmed, stuck and confused to being confident, clear-headed and focused as they go after their goals. As a mindset and systemic coach, I focus primarily on topics such as confidence, high performance, self coaching and self leadership and use my mindfulness-based and systemic approach to help my clients thrive with more ease. 

Patrick And I'm your co-host, Patrick, an entrepreneur just like you. I'm an international media producer working on live sports, premium documentaries and digital content. I help people bring their stories to life and work with a global network of partners to create engaging content. I live through the topics of our podcast, just like you, and I will try to ask the questions you might have.

But we're back. We're back for another week. How's your week going? 

Monika Well, it's a very intense week for me because I'm having a live training this week, so it's very exciting and bubbling, and people are sending me their questions. I love this feeling. I love this kind of interaction. 

Patrick It's going to be great. It's going to be great. I unfortunately can't be there. You know, I told you that I'm taking a few days off for this weekend, so…

Monika You have a very good excuse. You have a very… Paris is always a good excuse. 

Patrick Paris is always good. Not just as an excuse. So I still think it's going to be a great thing that you're doing. You're going to be so successful. So many people will be there. I'll be watching from afar. 

Monika Yes. This is always in preparation for something new. I've never… I mean, I've done a lot of workshops and trainings already, but it's always been for my clients, for their team, for their clients as well. So this is the first time that I'm hosting a training just for my community in this way. And I'm very happy and a little bit nervous and excited, and also in a lot of final preparations, because there is a lot of things to take care of before that. 

Patrick I'm sure you're going to be extremely successful with it. 

Which also brings us to this week's topic. We're talking about success. And while we're not talking just about success, but what it means to be successful on your own terms, right? 

Monika Such an important topic and such an important question. Many times I see that a lot of people ask themselves this question only after they have already started striving towards something, and then they get lost along the way. Or, they are at the beginning and they can't really find a good definition for themselves of where they are heading towards to, or what they are striving towards. 

Patrick I remember you had this extremely cool quote, in preparation, what was that again? 

Monika I love Oscar Wilde's idea that there are two tragedies in life. One is to not get what you want, and the other is to get what you want. And it's so beautifully ironic. 

Patrick I can totally feel it. It’s, it’s… you're basically standing there always thinking, that's what I want. And you're striving towards that, and you do everything to get there, and then you get it and then you're there and it's like, so now what? 

Monika And we start with that at an early age. So I can still remember already in school, we get kind of these deadlines and these milestones which are set from outside, of course. And I don't know what it was like for you, but for me it was a very good experience as well to have my parents be very open with us, talking with us. But to see as well there was this huge final exam and people were striving towards it as if this was the end all be all, you know, just defining this as the ultimate goal. And then once you had achieved it, it was really this moment of, now what? 

Patrick You start with school, then you go to university, and then even in jobs, it's everything is… there’s this project and then it's done. And then as soon as that project is done, you always feel like, okay, I've reached this goal, this milestone, that step. And then it's always like. So I'm not exactly sure how to go on from that. 

That's why we need to talk about it, because when you think about, I’m reaching something, I'm there. Does it mean that I'm successful? How do I know that I'm successful? 

So I think one of the first things that we should talk about is what does it even mean to be successful? What does successful mean? What is the word? What is the definition of it? 

Monika I think we started into this whole topic from an interesting angle already now, because there are different points of time where you can ask yourself this question. 

You can ask yourself this question when you have achieved a goal, just like what we just said. You have achieved a goal. And then you have to ask yourself, now what? 

You can ask yourself this question when you start out on a journey as you just set the goal. And this is one of the best points to ask yourself this question. 

And then you can ask yourself this question along the way, because this is so important that you check in with yourself all the time, again and again. Am I fulfilling my personal definition and my personal mission on this quest that I'm on? 

But what does it mean to be successful for yourself? I feel a lot of people don't take the time and the self-reflection it would need to actually answer this question honestly. And a lot of people don't really have the right questions to ask themselves in order to do it in a productive way. 

Patrick I remember I was at that point. Because when I started out in the industry, I basically did what everyone should do. I started out as an intern, then I did an assistant position coordinator position, and now I'm basically the production manager handling the productions. And when I started out, it felt like, okay, I need to do this in order to understand the job, everything that I need to do. And then year after year, I just progressed upwards a bit. While you're at it, while you're doing it, it feels like you're not successful at all because it feels like you're just stuck in this daily routine, in this day to day business, and you don't really look left and right. It's just, okay, I have to work. I have to do this, and it feels so long that you don't feel successful at all. It feels like you're stuck in this never ending daily routine. But after a few years, I had this moment where I thought, okay, I have to leave the industry because it doesn't feel right for me. And when I left, I looked back on the years before and suddenly I realized it's actually quite a story that I already have to tell. Long story short, I came back to the industry, obviously, because I can't do anything else. I don't want to do anything else. And then I realized that this success story that I never saw before is actually what helped me getting even further, because you already know what it means to do something and that you don't see success right away. 

Monika Yeah, there is a lot in what you just said. There is a lot about how we define success as a very results-oriented, future-oriented, results-oriented mark or like deadline, when actually we forget to define success also on a process-oriented level and on a quality level. Because as you just said, along the journey, as you progress, as you grow, as you succeed day in, day out, it may not seem like this, or it may not feel like this - simply because it's not the end result. Doesn't mean, though, that not the whole process is part of your succeeding. But we don't define it as that. 

And then many people will start either to doubt themselves or to question the whole thing. Because just like you said, it just takes too much time. And only in looking back we then, which is a good thing that you did, we then oftentimes acknowledge what happened. Or even then we don't want to look back because some people, and this is a huge tragedy then, some people get so defeated that they feel as if they are not succeeding all the time. And their goal, their markers, kind of move always further into the future that they then don't even want to look at the journey that they had. So they kind of compartmentalize everything and shut it out. Which is even worse, because then of course, you have this whole feeling of defeat and failure, which is not true. The problem is that you haven't defined success both on a results level, but also on a process level and quality level. 

Patrick I feel like we also need to talk about when speaking of success. And yes, there is the goal oriented approach to that. And then there is the process oriented approach. But we also need to talk about my approach to success, and then there's also your approach to success. I think it's important to say how I see my very own success could be very different to what you see as success. 

Monika Isn't just could be, it is very, very likely that it is always like that. Even if we think that we talk about the same thing, that's oftentimes just an illusion, because on the deepest level, we would have to discuss every little association that you have with success. And this leads directly into your values, into your experiences as well, into your past experiences, and into your personality. 

A lot of people have a very superficial definition of success, and then they think they talk about the same thing. If someone has the same, you could call it a symbol, you know. Like in the online coaching sphere, there is a lot of 10K successes. 

Patrick Oh, I can see that everywhere. It's all based on money. 

Monika But it's not just money, you know. It's not… it’s not about the money itself even. If it were about the money, if people were really thinking about or reflecting about it on a financial, holistic level as well, I would probably be more welcoming to this term. 

But right now there is just this 10K, with a capital K symbol, that is handed out to people as if this is the thing that they should aspire to, and there is no clarification in any way. What does this mean for you? How will you know that this 10K is reached in a way that is good for you? What does reaching 10K mean for you - with your talents, with your business model, with your starting point, with all the different things that come into your journey towards something. 

And about all of these things, we don't talk about them. Earning 10K with a team of five people is something completely different compared to earning 10K with a passive income business model. So we are just taking…

Patrick We’re just comparing things with each other that can’t be compared, basically. 

Monika But then we act as if we know what we're talking about. This is my biggest problem with this. There is no problem in taking the term even. It's just that we need to investigate it a little bit deeper. Because there is no one definition of this that will apply to everyone. But we still act, and then we put ourselves under the pressure of succeeding in a certain way, or having to fulfill a certain definition of someone else as they live it, as they fulfill it, simply because we haven't done the work for ourselves to define it more clearly. 

Patrick So that's the problem. Then we're comparing ourselves or the goals of others to ourselves, without even thinking about what it means for us. 

Monika Without even thinking about what it means for us, without even thinking about what our personal strengths might be and how they come into play here. Because that's a lot about actually not working against yourself, as well. Building something where you are not caging yourself. Just because it's right for someone else doesn't mean that it's right for you. So if you just adopt someone else's definition of success, or if you don't go deeper, you will probably find that at some point you are just running, running, running, and then you realize that you are building for yourself something that puts you in a structure, in a position ,in which you have never wanted to be in. 

Patrick Feels a bit like a golden cage actually.

Monika It is. It, it is. And I have a lot of clients who actually come to me very defeated in this moment, because on the paper they are succeeding. Like, officially, people are celebrating them and telling them that they have done everything right. And this is exactly what everyone else aspires to achieve as well. And they are just unhappy. They are just dreading every day that they have to continue nourishing the machine that they themselves have built. 

And then the only thing that you can do is actually stop. Be generous with yourself, because there is a lot of anger that comes up and in this moment towards yourself, towards your… the path that you have to build. Also a little bit of sometimes a certain disappointment and questioning of whether you are able to do something else because you just found yourself in this situation now, and you need a little bit of time to accept how things developed at such a peace to this point, without you actually catching the moment where you were like, oh, wait a second, this is not the right thing for me. 

And then you need to question all of that in a way that actually is productive and constructive, and it will give you a good personal, healthy definition of success in a way that is good and fulfilling for you.

Patrick So you already mentioned a few things. Why it's good to define success on your own terms. Is it also when I define my very own way of succeeding, when I think, okay, if I reach that, that's enough for me. I can compare myself to others. Yes, I can see that. I can acknowledge it. But I don't have to go towards that goal because my goal looks very different maybe. 

But how does it help me to define that goal? Because if I think about that, for me personally, it would probably be more motivation to still keep working, even though I feel like, okay, that 10K, for instance, that you mentioned. I know that in my job I might not reach it in the time that other people might reach it. But still defining that goal for me, where I know, okay, I want to do this project, for instance, I feel still motivated to do it. 

Monika And this is the power of finding your own definition of success. Now, I would really like to split a little bit the terminology here as we continue in our conversation. 

The goal is oftentimes what people write down as the SMART goals, as the specific numbers by a certain deadline, etc. but the success definition has to be much richer and has to be much more personalized to you. 

And this is where you say that the motivation comes in. This is your Why also. You need to question, well, if you have this goal, why do you want to achieve that? What will be different once you have achieved that? And if you ask these kinds of questions, you will be directly tapping into your values. And your values are the things that will keep you motivated and that will keep you disciplined also, when motivation even fails, you will know why you want to continue. Just like you said, you will know why you will come back as well to an industry that you maybe even already decided to leave. 

Patrick For me, it was definitely this because I… I didn't really know that it was called a Why back then. I just knew that I had to do something, that I wanted to do something. And yeah, for a while it felt like I couldn't do it anymore. But then it still drew me back. And that’s, that feeling is still there, and it still feels like, okay, maybe some projects are not the right thing for me, but in general, the work that I do, it's exactly aligned with what I want to do and why I want to work in a certain way. 

Monika And these are the values that once you have defined them, once you have fulfilled them and live them, you can already while succeeding towards the goal that you have defined, feel successful. You can find yourself checking in with yourself and really define whether you are successful today or not, and it will be directly related to your core. 

Or also, if you find that you are not living them, then you will want to question your path and want to see whether you might need to orient yourself again in a different way, or whether you need to go in a little bit of a different direction, or whether you need to question everything as well. 

Having defined your Why, having defined your own success term, it also helps you to stay flexible and at the same time clear. It gives you a very strong inner compass. 

Patrick So talking about this now, and I'm saying this knowing that we already disagreed in preparing for this episode for it, but I know how I can pick a fight with you in this thing here now. It sounds very easy. It sounds very easy, if I know my way, okay, then I define success on my own terms. But then why do so many people fail at this? If it's apparently just to find out what keeps you, I don't know, motivated, what keeps you going? What's your core value? Shouldn't we all know that? Why is it so hard then? 

Monika Oh, God yes. You know really well how to pick a fight with me. Well, if it were that easy, honestly, we wouldn't have so many people questioning themselves and questioning their path and questioning their success. And people who are successful finding themselves being completely unhappy and isolated or frustrated or whatever it is that you might feel in these moments . If it were that easy as all these feel good sentences make it seem, you know, just “Just follow your Why”, “Just follow your passion”. I'm sorry to say, I really like a positive attitude. I really like optimistic approaches, but we have to stay realistic otherwise it will be demotivating. 

It is difficult to find your own definition of success because there are a lot of things that play into it. A lot of the time, people have been raised in a certain setting that told them what they should aspire to. So they have a lot of should goals. And right now with social media as well, I see that a lot of people, even if they distance themselves from their culture or form their family system in which they were raised, if they define their own terms, it is too easy to get sucked into someone else's should goals again. You could just go from one extreme to the other. 

Patrick So we're back at the 10K that you mentioned before. Basically we're just seeing it out there. They're saying reach the 10K without knowing what it actually means, and then you're back to comparing yourself and saying, I'm not successful. 

Monika Again, I’m not saying anything against the 10K, but this is exactly it. They are giving them a goal and a definition of success without further explanation, without further insights, and also without further encouragement to really check in with yourself and look at how this fits into your own values, system, personality, your wishes, your desires, everything that goes into this. 

So there are a lot of should goals. Also, I know that you know from experience as well. Even if you start something with a good intention, something that is aligned with you, something that you have truly found as the right path for you, there will be people then who tell you how you should do this and what you should aspire to achieve with this. So other people's opinions will constantly be influencing you in some way. And if you haven't found a way to set clear boundaries, it is very difficult to, to really know what is your goal and what is your definition of success and what is someone else's. 

Patrick Yeah, it gets really tricky because it feels like these people are just telling you, if you do this, you'll succeed, because I did, and it's even it's even worse then. Because you feel even worse because you don't succeed with an obviously proven track record. And it feels like, okay, someone else achieved this by doing this, and then you feel like, why can I do that? 

Monika Don't even get me started on this one. People saying “I succeeded, so you can do it too. Just follow my path.” This is one of the biggest traps that I feel that people are - with oftentimes good intentions - putting out there. 

We need to start encouraging people at the same time to stay critical and be like, listen, I have succeeded in finding my own definition of success. This is what it looks like for me. This is the path that took me there. Here is my experience. And now I want you to find the parts that could work for you as well, but also stay true to yourself. 

Patrick So make it your own. 

Monika Yeah, and this is just too complex for many people to, one side to communicate. On the other hand, also, of course, a lot of people sell through scarcity and fear. So we are sold a simple solution to a very complex problem. 

Patrick I guess that's a bigger problem and a discussion for another time, actually, because simple solutions always sell faster and better because, well, it's a one [size] fits all. But especially when we talk about defining the success. No way. I mean, we talked about it in preparing this episode. There's just no way this can work for people. 

Monika I mean, there are simple solutions, definitely, once you have found your own compass. And it doesn't mean that there is always going to be complete clarity about what it means, how it looks like, etc. But if you have found this relationship to your inner compass, as I call it, you will be able to navigate this whole searching part as well in a much clearer and much more efficient way. 

But if you are in a confused state, if you are not tapped into and deeply rooted within yourself, and if you don't have your own idea and definition of what you need in order to feel successful, to be successful, these simple solutions may be just like, you know, a hit or miss thing. 

They could be what works for you, but the chances are very high that a lot of people will try you… try to sell you a hundred different things, and you will spend a lot of money and a lot of time and a lot of frustration, and sometimes even give up along the way until you find the one thing that works for you maybe.

Patrick Speaking of solutions, how do I define then success on my own terms? Because we've been talking about it now for a while. There are downfalls that will happen along the way, but what are some steps that I can take to define success for myself? 

Monika Well, the first thing that you need to be aware of and that you need to pay attention to, as we have already kind of talked about this in this whole discussion as well, is your level of self-awareness. 

So you really need to take the time in order to ask yourself, what do I actually want? How do I want to live? Who do I want to be? And then there are a lot of questions, coaching questions, which I teach my clients that go a little bit deeper. 

Patrick So that's a starting point. Basically, you ask them, have you ever thought about what do you want in life and how do you want to live? It's a very simple question, but it's very powerful. 

Monika Well, these questions are part of my onboarding process. So usually first of all, usually people have a have an understanding of what they want oftentimes when they come to me, because they're a lot of very driven people who come to me. 

So for them, it's more about already going the next step then to ask, well, what do you want? Why is that important to you? What will be different once you have achieved that? What will you have more of or less of once you've achieved that? 

And with questions like these, you will usually come to a value level, the value dimension where you are actually finding out, well, what is it that this goal that they have defined is standing for? So the goal is practically the symbol of reaching something. So for example, if we take the 10K goal as an example for this, you could very well write what do you want? I want to reach the 10K mark of monthly income. Well okay. Then I would ask you why is that important to you? Well, it would mean that I could actually invest in a lot more projects that I find useful and helpful, and that would help my clients. Right now, with the finances that I have, I can invest in them. Okay. So it would allow you to create even more value. Or then I could also ask, okay, what or how would this feel? 

Patrick But that feels to me very different. When you ask that someone or you get that reply, it feels to me very different than someone just saying I want to be rich. 

Monika Yeah, well, I want to be rich is a definition of a state. It doesn't mean what you are going to do with this richness. 

If you have a lot of money and you invested in stocks and your own portfolio, I find that this is a very different vision and a very different goal compared to someone who wants to have a lot of money because they are motivated to invest in cancer research. 

So this is something that a lot of people then start… where they start really defining what this goal, what this success actually means for them. And there we go into the quality part. There you define what this excess would actually look like. 

Patrick Well, there's also the question at what cost then? 

Monika That's a very good point. A lot of people don't ask themselves, well, what will be the cost of that? And this is something that you have to ask yourself with any goal that you define, any definition of success, also, what will be the cost of that? And then ask yourself, am I willing to face these consequences? 

There are a lot of qualities then that you then need to kind of practice, and this is a non-judgmental curiosity towards yourself. Self-awareness. You need to be radically honest with yourself. And this is what I find that oftentimes a lot of people then find easier to do with a coach by their side. Because I will be very honest with people if I find that they are somehow just avoiding the real issue. 

Patrick It's something you don't want to look where it hurts. It's kind of normal for people. You don't want to press there. 

Monika Yeah, that's true. And we don't oftentimes have the space that… As a coach I learned and I practice creating a space where you can look at what hurts or what's unclear or what's maybe even outrageously bold, so that you don't even know whether you can allow yourself to dream of that. 

Something that I see with a lot of clients as well. When they have big goals, when they have big dreams, they don't want to sound illusionary. They don't want to sound naive. So they never really use the terminology and the ideas and the dreams that they have, but they use someone else's because they sound more socially acceptable. And then they lose themselves between their own real goals and their own success definition, and the one that they think is okay to actually present to the outside world. 

Patrick So we could talk about this for hours. To be honest, there's so much in there. But we've talked about defining success, what it means to define success on your own terms, what kind of steps I can take to define that success so I'm a little bit more clear on how to move towards my very own version of success and my goals. 

And this is also something that we're going to discuss in in the next episode, because the Why you've mentioned it quite often actually through this episode, but the Why is not something that's new. It's not a new invention that came up like in the last few years. 

Monika Oh no, not at all. So anyone who has read Viktor Frankl, for example, and his book Yes to Life. In Spite of Everything or Man's Search for Meaning, knows how powerful the idea of a why, a really strong why can be. 

But there is one book, of course, that definitely highlighted or brought this whole question and the term Why very much into our present time, into our conversations again, and this is Simon Sinek’s Start with why. 

Patrick And we're going to take a closer look in the next episode. 

Monika And just a little reminder, if you find it difficult to define success on your terms or define your Why, what motivates you, which qualities, which values, you have to feel fulfilled to be truly happy, satisfied and successful as you go and achieve your goals - then let's hop on a call. I have a free Breakthrough Session for you, in which we can spend 30 minutes talking about your vision, your goals, and what you might need in order to truly achieve happiness and fulfillment as you reach those goals. 

Patrick If you enjoyed this episode, share it with your fellow entrepreneurs so they can listen too. Grab the link in our show notes and send it to them. 

Monika If you're looking to join our tribe of movers and shakers to get a sense of belonging and fresh insights, join our Pioneers Club community. The link to our community is waiting for you in our show notes as well. 

Patrick And don't forget to connect with us on LinkedIn or Instagram and let us know what was a helpful thought or insight that you gained from this episode. 

Monika Have any questions or ideas for us? Head over to our LinkedIn or Instagram pages and tell us. We read every submission and would love to answer your question in a later episode too. So thanks for joining us. 

Patrick See you in the next one.