How do you measure the success of your career?

Maybe I’m stating the obvious, but each of us chooses the work we do for different reasons. That’s why each of us alone bears sole responsibility for whatever professional success we might or might not enjoy along the way.

Let that sink in for a moment. Success is a choice we make.

We choose the industry or profession we work in – healthcare, education, professional sports, or law.

We chose the organizational context within which we work – profit or non-profit, large corporation, start-up, or independent practice.

We also choose the kinds of tasks we perform within these industries and organizational contexts – engineering, marketing, quarterbacking, or consulting.

It’s not so surprising, then, that we might each measure success in different ways.

Some of us define success in terms of how much money we bring home at the end of the month. For us, the work we do is primarily an economic transaction.

Others of us measure success in terms of how much we enjoy spending time with our colleagues. We view work primarily as a social transaction.

Finally, some of us measure success by the extent to which the work we do is aligned with deeply-held personal values. For us, our work is what we might call a matter of the heart – a commitment we make not to a particular industry, organization, or discipline but to some sense of purpose larger than ourselves.

Ideally, we work for some combination of these three reasons. But even if our work life is less than ideal, it’s important to acknowledge that any one of these three ways of justifying the work we do is perfectly acceptable. No one is more noble than another. There is no one “best” reason to work.

And yet…

Human development theory suggests that we pass through a series of developmental stages as we mature and become well-functioning adults. Two of these stages include a phase in which we default to others’ measures of success and a subsequent phase where we become the authors of our own definition of success.

Research also suggests, sadly, that nearly half of us will get stuck in the first stage without ever making it to the second. We live our lives according to who others – parents, peers, or the culture-at-large – expect us to be, doing the kind of work they expect us to do.

The result? At the end of the day – and maybe even at the end of our lives- we feel empty, unfulfilled, and resentful, lacking any sense of purpose or satisfaction.

That’s why it’s not so much our personal definition of success – be it economic, social, or purpose-based – but instead how we arrive at that definition that matters most. It’s the “how,” not the “what,” of the way we measure success that gives our life meaning and determines whether, in the end, we can conclude that we’ve enjoyed a whole life well lived.