Redefining Success Was Key to Thriving in My Career Break
The key to feeling successful during your career break is knowing you get to define and redefine your version of success over and over again. Here’s how to get started.
The traditional workforce came with a title, a salary and in turn, very clear (and visible) success metrics. We’ve talked before about the transition into a career break and the first daunting step of finding confidence sans title. Reevaluating my success metrics when I stepped into the day to day of stay-at-home motherhood was equal parts important to gain clarity, but also to find peace in how I was spending my time. Herein lies the reason why when pausing or shifting to focus on family life or building meaningful projects and small businesses alongside, women experience self-consciousness or doubt—we’re operating against a tired static measuring stick. The key to feeling successful is knowing you get to define and redefine your version of success over and over again for your moment in time and for what matters to you.
Map Out Your Success Metrics
Taking the time to map out your success metrics each season serves you for three major reasons:
1. Having a clear view on your personal goals during this chapter will let you hold the external feedback loop more lightly. Over my six years as a parent downshifting work to part-time, pausing work to focus on family full-time, and ultimately, building my own brand, I can say that people who care about you, people who are curious or people who want to connect, will ask questions about what you’re working on, what your motivations are or what comes next. At worst, I had a financial advisor comment that I must be itching to find my purpose but more often, I still have dear friends ponder what the end game is for Mother Untitled. My hope for you is that these questions will land as warm and inviting, but once in a while they will land as anxiety-inducing. I can also promise you, you’ll feel 100x better if you feel prepared for them. You don’t owe anyone the answers besides yourself, but make sure you feel very good about the answers you give yourself.
2. In the absence of a finish line, new success metrics will help you still feel like you are moving forward. By nature, humans are wired to be goal oriented so if you’re not moving toward something it can be easy to fall into the trap of feeling listless. In the case of parenting, there is no measurable sales goal or promotion cycle to work to meet, but you have an incredible opportunity to step back and redesign what success uniquely looks like for you in this stage of life. For me, stepping out of the workforce to make more room for family life was to grow into the woman I’d always wanted to be. That meant I could end each day asking myself a series of questions about how I wanted to show up (i.e. Did I feel like a patient version of myself?). This gave me the opportunity to check in with myself on what was working and what was not so I could keep adjusting to meet these “goals.” Even on the days that the house was a disaster and the kids were having epic meltdowns, I could still see myself as growing and moving in the right direction.
3. It prevents you from falling into the tricky trap as a stay-at-home parent of attaching your success metrics to your children’s behavior. Who else has watched their child fall apart at a family event and think, “it must be something I’m doing?” Even more so, if you’ve shifted career for family and your children are a primary focus of your time it is so natural to make it about us. However, we all know that children are developing human beings and not a linear ruler nor ours to mold. Our success as parents is found not in our kids’ behavior or their performance but how we want to show up as steady leaders in our household. What that looks like for you and what makes your household feel whole and healthy can be different, but the one constant is that kids are unpredictable and the only valid metric of success that we can attach to them is knowing we’ve done our job to make them feel loved and safe.
Your Definition of Success Evolves With You
Interestingly, getting clear on success metrics came more easily for me in parenting because I had a north star of being present and peaceful for family life. Redefining success metrics was a bit tricker when I started investing in a non-traditional project alongside. With both consulting and then Mother Untitled, I got questions that all boil down to what does success look like?
Here’s the thing you have to accept whether you’re in a career break or downshifting or working on a non-traditional business or project: Success isn’t always money, and in a culture that tends to attach value to profit people tend to be curious about what you’re optimizing for. But success can come in the form of creativity, brand building, networking, impact, community connection or community building, learning, or of course money. Every year I revisit what success looks like.
Here in rank order is what success looks like for me now and the work I do on Mother Untitled:
Impact: Every note I get from women saying this platform has helped them feel seen, validated, or inspired has kept me going.
Community: Growing the genuine connection between the women who read and follow and myself is something that I trust will serve me and them now and in the long run.
Brand Value: This is about the MU brand and my personal brand. Keeping my story and this narrative alive and raising its profile and reach preserves optionality for how I/we can create impact later on.
If there’s something you’re working on—whether it’s nurturing family or a project alongside—have you taken some time to re-evaluate what success looks like for you this year? Hint: it doesn’t always have to be money.
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