You have the job, the apartment, maybe a partner. Someone asks what success means to you, and the answer that comes out is the one you’d give in a job interview. It sounds right and it doesn’t sound like you.
This guide helps you find the personal answer. It uses ten questions, one word looked at from six sides, and a friend who listens. You can do it with the Thesis deck, the free online table, or a word written on a scrap of paper.
The short answer
Your definition of success lives in stories more than in a sentence. It’s in a parent’s job, a first paycheck, a grade someone was proud of, a goal you reached and didn’t enjoy. A one-line definition comes after you’ve told a few of those stories out loud.
That’s why a list of definitions from other people rarely helps. Their lines describe their stories. Yours starts with yours, and it can change as you change. The word stays the same while the person reading it moves on.
Why the old answer stops fitting
The first definition of success often arrives from outside. A family names the jobs worth having. A school hands out grades. A first employer hands out titles. You can meet every one of those marks and still feel the score is off, because someone else set the marks.
Research on regret points to where a personal definition might come from. Shai Davidai and Thomas Gilovich ran six studies on people’s most lasting regrets. In those studies, 72% of the regrets people reported were about their ideal self: hopes, goals and things they wanted to become. The other 28% were about duties and obligations. Asked for their single biggest regret, 76% named one about the ideal self (Davidai and Gilovich 2018). The goals you’d regret dropping say something about what success means to you.
Psychologists who study meaning in life take a similar view of personal criteria. Michael Steger and colleagues built a 10-item questionnaire that lets people judge meaning in their lives by their own criteria. It scores two things separately: having meaning and searching for it (Steger et al. 2006). Both can be true of one person at once: a full life on paper, and a search still going.
Ten questions to find your answer
These questions work best with a pen, or with a friend asking them. Answer with a story where you can, and keep the story specific: a place, a year, a person.
- Who in your family was called successful when you were a child, and why?
- What was the first thing you were praised for?
- When did you reach a goal and feel less than you expected?
- When did you feel proud of something nobody else saw?
- What would you keep doing if nobody paid you for it?
- Whose life do you quietly envy, and which part of it?
- What would make a year feel like a good year?
- What’s enough money, in your own numbers?
- Which goal would you regret letting go of at 80?
- What did success mean to you ten years ago?
Look for words that repeat across your answers. A name, a place or a feeling that shows up three times is part of your definition.
Look at the word from six sides
A second way in is to stay with the word itself and change the angle. The Thesis die has six faces: MEMORIES · BODY · PEOPLE · VALUES · CHILDHOOD · FUTURE. The only instruction is “Look at the word from that side.”
Roll it, or pick a face, and say what Success brings up from there. Then roll again. The same word gives a different story each time. Six stories about one word make a better definition than six minutes of trying to sound wise.
Success has a Notebook on its other side. Choose the idea when you want to talk about goals and what you’ve reached. Choose the Notebook when a story is easier: a school notebook, a diary, a plan written at 19. Old plans show what success used to mean, and the distance from there to now is often the answer you’re after.
Try it with someone
A definition said out loud to another person is easier to test. A friend hears the line that sounds rehearsed and asks about the one that doesn’t. Two or three people at a table after dinner is enough.
Before you start, agree how passing works. The Thesis rules open with “Before you start, agree together how passing works.” Then take turns:
- Draw a card. Choose a side: the idea or the thing.
- Roll the die.
- Look at the word from that side. Say as much or as little as feels right.
- The others ask what they’re curious about, gently, without judging.
- Pass the die to the left.
The rule card gives three follow-up questions that fit every word: What did that feel like? Who else was there? Has it always meant that to you? For Success, the third one does most of the work. It turns a definition into a timeline.
“There are no right answers.” This line matters for Success more than for most words, because the word arrives with so many right answers attached.
Two words close to Success
Success sits next to other words in the deck. Two of them pull the conversation toward the parts that feel unsettled.
Enough has a Photograph on its other side. Success often has no finish line; Enough asks where yours is. Some players answer with a number, some with a feeling, some with a picture of a kitchen they grew up in. The Photograph side brings up who was in the frame when life felt like enough.
Regret has a Lamp on its other side. Talking about regret with Success in mind shows which goals still matter. A regret about a path not taken often names a version of success you haven’t let go of. If the word lands too close, choose the Lamp side, or pass.
What to do tonight
Write the word Success on a piece of paper. Pick one question from the list above, or one face of the die. Tell one story to someone you trust, and let them ask one follow-up. “A short answer is a full answer. You can always ask for more.”
When you’re done, end the way every game of Thesis ends: each player names one thing they discovered about someone at the table today. “Sometimes one word is enough.”
See the rules and the box, or open the free online table. The cards above have their own pages: Success, Enough and Regret. For playing with a few close people, see Thesis for friends. The research behind the deck explains where the words came from. For a couples’ evening built around one word, see deep date night questions for couples.