What Does True Success Look Like?

As a writer, your days can fill up quickly. As you spend your time not just writing, but prepping for meetings, navigating notes calls and hustling to get ahead, the bigger picture can become smaller and smaller until you forget what you were looking at in the first place. It’s important to take a moment away from the everyday business of writing to remember why you started, where you’d like to go, and what true success looks like to you. Having your own definition can help you stay grounded while you define your career goals and choose which opportunities to say yes -- or no -- to. 

Here’s how some of the best minds of our time define success:

Winston Churchill:

"Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.”

Maya Angelou:

Maya says "Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it."

Deepak Chopra: 

Deepak says, "Success in life could be defined as the continued expansion of happiness and the progressive realization of worthy goals.”

Warren Buffett:

Warren Buffett, one of thetop three richest people in the world,doesn't use money as a measure of prosperity. Instead, he measures success by the relationships in his life. According to Buffett, it all comes down to one question: "Do the people you care about love you back?"

Bill Gates:

Every year, Bill Gates puts together an end-of-year assessment. He measures his success by asking the questions: "Did I devote enough time to my family?" "Did I learn enough new things?" and "Did I develop new friendships and deepen old ones?" 

Arianna Huffington:

Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post, had this to say about success: “To live the lives we truly want and deserve, and not just the lives we settle for, we need a third measure of success that goes beyond the two metrics of money and power, and consists of four pillars: well-being, wisdom, wonder, and giving."

Happy, successful writing!

I’d like to know how you define success. Tell me @CaroleKirsch!