What Does Success Mean to You as We Approach the New Year?

It’s that time of year again, where we pause to spend time with family and friends and start to think about what next year will look like for us. For many that means reassessing their current roles and thinking about their career trajectory. How can we tackle this effectively without feeling overwhelmed after the holiday rush?

Let’s start from the beginning. Take a deep breath and check in with yourself. In my book, What Lights You Up? Illuminate Your Path and Take the Next Big Step in Your Career, there are many worksheets to help you answer questions such as: How are you feeling about your job? Your life? Your career trajectory? Are you living the way that you want to or had planned to?

Jot down the answers to the following questions: What is your current situation? Do you have a vision of what the next year looks like? How much do you realistically want to earn this year? What kind of a work/life balance do you need? Where do you want to go this year? What can you accomplish?

Are You Aligned With Your Purpose?

Are you aligned with your mission, vision, and values in your job now? Are you feeling a sense of purpose and meaning in your work? What makes you the happiest right now? Identifying what makes you happy can sometimes be difficult to answer. As adults, many of us have forgotten how to take the time to answer these questions because we’re so busy checking off tasks from our to-do lists that we rarely take the time to think about ourselves or what makes us truly happy anymore. Think about how you define success in this current stage in your life. It all starts with defining what success means to you, the creation of a plan, and a strategy to get you to where you want to go. One foot in front of the other. Let’s go!

Here are a few tips to help you define what success looks like for you, in your life and in your work.

What Does Success Mean to You?

Success means different things to everyone. For some, success may mean reaching a certain level of financial stability or professional achievement. For others, success may mean having a fulfilling personal life or positively affecting the world. Maybe it’s not just one of those things, but a combination of all of them. We know how intertwined professional achievement and personal success can be!

Ways to Define Success

In a LinkedIn article this year by Nicole Fredricks Jackson, “Defining Success: What Does Success Mean to You?”, the author lists a number of questions that go above and beyond just looking at a company’s key performance indicators. They include:

• What are your values and priorities in life?

• What do you want to achieve personally and professionally?

• How do you want to make a positive impact on the world?

• What kind of lifestyle do you want to live?

• What kind of relationships do you want with your family, friends, and community?

Spend some time with this exercise. Set aside a good hour to think about these questions and write out your answers. Then set it aside for a while and do something else. When you come back later and review what you’ve written, you are likely to have some strong indicators of what it will take to look back on 2024 with pride in your professional results and your personal success goals, too.

Achieving Success With Your Team

Once you have clarity on your personal goals, look at what you want to achieve in the workplace. How can you be just as intentional about driving results for yourself and your team? Get very clear on what success looks like so you can create a plan to help you achieve it. Remember, you are not alone. Include your teammates and colleagues in this planning, as well. Understand each team member's motivations and strengths and assign them tasks accordingly to help move forward together.

I regularly do this exercise with my coaching clients within the context of their current roles. I’ve asked my own team at MVPExec to do this and I do it myself every year. In addition to helping create your plan and define your intentions for the remainder of the year, it can also become a foundation for your professional success plan in the coming year.

Here are some additional tips to get you started and help you stay on course:

• Always start with a vision and a plan.

• Review your goals from last year and create a measure for what success looks like this year.

• Curve balls will come your way. Stay flexible and creative.

• Take calculated risks and learn to pivot quickly.

• Become a student of your industry and learn from your competitors, too.

• Focus on great customer service and operational excellence by getting to know your client or audience in a meaningful way.

• Stay organized and take notes to reflect on for continuous improvement.

Consistent “check-ins” and an openness to recalibrating as needed will help keep the process fluid and moving ahead. With clear intention, deliberate planning, and the right people in place, you can set yourself up to achieve your goals and more.

You deserve to thrive in 2025, so take whatever time you need to think about how to answer these questions and do the exercises. We are all at different stages of our unfolding, and that’s ok, start from where you are right now. And, after the holiday gifts have been unwrapped, there’s no better time than the present to give yourself the gift of a career and a life that you love.

You must be open to and ready for opportunities to succeed in this endeavor. Coming at it from a fixed mindset won’t get you very far, but if you are open to seeing the possibilities around you, you might be surprised at what is just around the corner. You never know when the next great thing will offer itself to you. But, if you’re walking through life with blinders on, you might not even recognize the opportunity in front of you.

Be deliberate and intentional, but also be patient with yourself. Sometimes the opportunities ahead may look more like a detour. If that’s the case, don’t be afraid to take that detour, because it could be the opportunity that sets you up for success for the rest of your life.

Continue your journey toward more joy, success, and satisfaction in your job and it just might lead to exactly where you are meant to be.

And as you conclude the holiday celebrations, don’t forget to celebrate your accomplishments and wins along the way!

You have come so far in your journey. Every step you’ve taken, every dream you’ve pursued, every twist and turn and speed bump along the way has brought you to where you are today.

Celebrate your resilience and your strength and all that you have overcome, and start to shine the light on your future. Let your future “light you up!”