Journaling Prompts for Redefining What Success Means to You
The definition of success that most of us were handed—credentials, salary, status, visible achievement—was built by other people for other purposes. And many people spend significant portions of their life pursuing it before arriving at the top and finding it quieter than expected, or realizing midway that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall. Redefining success is not giving up. It's the harder, more important work of figuring out what success actually means to you—in terms of how you feel, how you live, who you are in relationship, and what you contribute.
Journaling Prompts
What is the definition of success you've been operating from? Where did it come from—your parents, your culture, a specific person you wanted to impress, your own early ambition?
Have you ever achieved something that was supposed to feel like success and didn't? Write about that experience—what happened, what you expected to feel, what you actually felt.
What does a successful day feel like from the inside—not what you got done, but how you felt moving through it? How often does your life look like that?
What would you pursue if no one whose opinion you valued would ever know about it? What does that answer reveal about what actually matters to you versus what you've been performing?
Write your own definition of success—not the inherited one, but yours. What would have to be true about your daily life, your relationships, your work, and your sense of yourself for you to call it a success?