Success, unlearned: what if the definition was never yours?

For a long time, I believed there was only one definition of success. And I so often did not feel that I was meeting it, at least not in the “prescribed” way.

Back during my time in London, I had a few friends who also worked in banking, but in corporate finance. It was tough to see them - they would come home after midnight, leave for work in the morning. And I often wondered, “Do they really consider this as normal?” But as it happens, there was always someone who worked more. Another M&A team member is staying one or two hours longer. Another group pulling all-nighters. “Ours is not that bad,” they’d say. As always, everything is relative.

You might think: “Ok, this is an extreme example”, and it is to some extent. But if we are honest, back then, and still today, the longer you worked, the more intense your job is (or seems to be), the busier you are = the more successful you appear. In our world, the hustling is worn as a badge of honour.

When you start your career inside such an environment, or more accurately, such a bubble, you often don’t question the underlying logic. You simply accept it as normal. Your entire peer group is doing the same thing, so how wrong can it be? And even if you feel something doesn’t fit, that something feels off, that such a way of working and living doesn’t sit right - you carry on anyway.

Evolving Definition

For me, something about that definition of success always felt wrong, but it took me years to understand why.

I felt out of place. I wanted some life, too. Why live in those incredible, cosmopolitan cities if you never get to enjoy what they offer? Back then, that wasn’t seen as particularly ambitious - certainly not by those opting for 70-80 hour weeks.

Any resemblance to “work-life balance” (confusing label!) was quietly looked down upon. To draw a parallel from the startup world I’ve been part of for some years now: it’s like pitching to a VC and having them dismiss your idea as a “lifestyle business.” Not ambitious enough. The market is too small. Not scalable. Not fund-returning potential. There’s an unspoken judgment in that label, as if to say, “You want to build something big and have a life?” In the VC game, the answer is often no, and that is fine, because the rules of that game are clear - and choosing to play it is optional.

When it comes to our careers, though, we should be in the driving seat. And any return on investment - emotional, financial, or otherwise - is ours to bear, for better or worse.

Lastly, we change. You’re not the same person at 40 that you were at 25. Your life, your environment, how you work, the world itself - everything shifts. So your definition of success should evolve, too. But for many high achievers, it doesn’t. Because what we think is “our definition” is often not ours at all.

Where Our Definition Comes From

Most definitions of success start long before we become aware of them. They start in childhood. They form in the small, unspoken moments: in how our parents or caregivers talk about work, money, colleagues, ambition, what they classify as success, failure, “good jobs,” “safe jobs.”

The foundation is set early, for example:

• If your parents had stable, government-backed jobs, you might have internalised safety as the highest value.

• If your parents were entrepreneurs, you might lean toward independence, or avoid it entirely after witnessing close up what a rollercoaster or even crash test owning a business can be.

• If you grew up surrounded by “traditional success”, you may have learned to see it as the only acceptable path.

These are not rules or by any means all the possibilities; they are simply reflections of our environments.

For me, academic success was expected. Best grades weren’t celebrated - they were assumed. When I went abroad for high school, the expectations intensified. “If you get into a good university, you’ll get a good job.” Eventually, those expectations became my own.  Summers without activities? Not an option. Courses, internships, extra work were the norm - I mean, something has got to fill that resume!

But here is the strange part: The actual goal was never clearly defined. What was the endpoint? What was “enough”? What exactly was I striving toward?

And the truth is: without a clear destination, you can never “arrive”.

The captain without a compass

We become captains of a boat without a destination or a compass. Or, as Seneca famously put it: “If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favourable”. We flow and float, and we do things, but the key thing is missing: the vision and the clear intention. When expectations are high, but clarity is low, there is no way to feel satisfied. Regardless of how we toss and turn it, we cannot get “there” if we do not know what “there” is.

Peer pressure cements this. When I started my MSc in Finance in London, everyone was applying to banks, funds, or consulting firms. Even if you arrived not really knowing what you wanted to do? Well, you quickly “learned” what success should look like.

Promotions. Titles. Salaries. The “right” postcode. The “right” holidays. The “right” nursery and schools, once children arrive.

And slowly, you adopt it all as your definition. Success becomes external - measured by others, and validated by others.

A First Moment of Real Redefining

Interestingly, one of the proudest moments of my adult life had nothing to do with traditional career success. It was the moment I decided to leave Brazil after four years of living and working there.

I moved to that beautiful tropical country in my mid-twenties; not when the timing made sense, not when the economy was booming, not when the markets were strong. Actually, quite the opposite: the country was entering a recession, I did not have a job, did not speak the language, and on paper, that was a completely illogical decision. Except my intuition told me it was the right one.

Fast forward a few years, and the same quiet inner knowing told me it was time to return to Europe. People would often ask, “Do you miss it? Will you go back?” And the answer was a clear no. And, for the first time in my life, I felt something new: peace and fulfilment.

Peace because the decisions were only mine. Peace because I had finally followed my own compass, not someone else’s. And fulfilment because I realised success could be defined in ways far beyond what we traditionally celebrate. It was the first time success felt internal, not external.

We all have moments like this - moments of real achievement that don’t fit the typical “success story” narrative. The trouble is, we rarely value them enough. When I ask my clients to list their greatest achievements, they almost always give me the obvious, resume-worthy answers. Meanwhile, some of the most extraordinary things they have done, both in work or in life, they dismiss, overlook, or do not even register as success.

Redefining success

Redefining success does not start with a new job, a new company, or a new ambition. It starts with understanding where your old definition came from, the voices that shaped it, the expectations we absorbed, and the pressures we inherited without choosing them.

Once we see that our definition of success was not “ours” to begin with, we finally create the space to ask what comes next.

In the next article, I will explore exactly that: how our definition of success evolves when our life changes, when we change, and once we begin listening inward rather than outward.