Values-Aligned Success Definition
Define success first so your actions serve the life you want
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 96%
Values-Aligned Success Definition begins before goal setting. Step back and specify what profiting or success actually means to you: money, autonomy, geography, family, creative work, curiosity, or another combination. Compare that answer with default cultural signals such as promotions, bigger teams, watches, or houses, and remove goals that matter mainly because they are externally rewarded. Use the resulting definition to judge current opportunities and actions; a higher-paying management role can be a loss if the desired life centres on hands-on creative work. Revisit the definition regularly because circumstances and values can change. Clear values do not remove hard trade-offs, but they give those trade-offs a coherent direction and expose the dis-ease created by living out of alignment.
Origin
At the episode's close, Stulberg identifies defining profiting and living in alignment with personal values as the actionable foundation for subsequent choices.
Core principles
- 01Success is personally defined rather than culturally inherited
- 02A clear definition directs subsequent action
- 03Misalignment produces persistent dis-ease
How to run it
- 1
Step back
Pause ordinary activity long enough to examine what you are optimising for.
Watch out Busyness can keep an inherited definition unexamined.
- 2
Name the values
List the conditions and values that make life feel worthwhile, such as autonomy, family, craft, income, or place.
Pro tip Use concrete conditions alongside abstract values.
- 3
Remove borrowed status
Identify goals that matter primarily because culture, peers, or an industry label them successful.
Watch out More money or a larger title is not automatically your version of progress.
- 4
Translate into choices
Use the definition to decide what to accept, decline, start, or stop now.
Pro tip Test opportunities by the daily life they create, not only their headline reward.
- 5
Review alignment
Regularly compare how you live with the values and revise either actions or the definition honestly.
Pro tip Persistent dis-ease can be evidence of misalignment.
In the wild
A creative specialist is offered more money to manage one hundred people. Her definition of success prioritises hands-on craft and autonomy over title or team size. She declines the role and chooses a path that preserves the work she loves.
→ The career decision serves her own values rather than a default status ladder.
Common mistakes
Inheriting the definition
Treating promotion, money, or scale as universal success can optimise life toward someone else's values.
Defining without acting
Values that never change a choice are aspirations, not an operating definition.
Is it for you?
Best for
People with enough basic security to choose among competing career and life paths.
Not ideal for
People whose immediate basic needs leave little practical choice until structural support improves.
From the transcript
“profiting can also mean knowing your core values and crafting a life that is in alignment with them”
“define profiting so what does it mean for you to be profiting”
“how you define that will then dictate the actions that follow”
From the episode
Brad Stulberg: Six Mental Health Principles Entrepreneurs Need to Beat Burnout
Brad Stulberg