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When we start our working lives, our culture encourages us to aspire to success. We are driven to set goals for progress and define success according to cultural norms or the context in which we are raised. Often, this leads to a relentless pursuit of success.
Success: What now?
We may achieve success, but its nature often propels us to seek the next goal and the next. This is particularly evident among professional athletes, who dedicate themselves to achieving success in their chosen sport. After attaining an Olympic gold medal or a place in a premier football team with World Cup victories, they may ask, “What now?”. Some redefine success and set new goals, though this doesn’t always work out as hoped. An example is a well-known sprinter who attempted to compete over a different distance—it didn’t bring the results he anticipated. This relentless focus on success can close our eyes to other possibilities for a meaningful life.
For many senior professionals, success may eventually feel like fool’s gold. You may have wealth and recognition, but later, you wish you had valued other things more. This realisation often comes during a career transition or the “second half” of life, leading them to question the significance of their work, “What is it all about?”. Was it merely about enriching themselves or others financially while incurring personal costs such as alienation from family, loss of community, health issues, or missed time with loved ones? Winning success can feel like a hollow victory.
Shifting from Success to Significance?
Moving from success to significance involves shifting focus from personal achievements to our impact on others and the environment in which we live. Significance is about the relationships we build, our spiritual connections, and the changes we bring to our communities or professions. It’s about giving back and making a difference rather than seeking personal gain.
For those unfamiliar with this perspective, it can be challenging to start thinking in terms of significance. A good starting point is reflecting on personal purpose, gifts and what others value in us. From there, experimenting with new actions or projects can help clarify what feels meaningful.
In my journey, I once believed that achieving financial success and giving back later would lead to significance. However, this approach undermined other areas where I could have made a difference. I see the importance of intangible contributions—offering wisdom, hope, connection, and support. That, for me, starts to move towards seeing my life as having significance. As a part of that, I need to connect with my maker and recognise the spiritual being that I am and what that means in the set of faith elements I am committed to.
If you want to seek significance, recognise that this is a multithreaded rope, and a single element may not be enough for you. Because measuring it and attaining it is less easy to define as success, you will have to be much more intentional about incremental changes to your behaviour, outlook, and interactions with others as you seek to move towards significance.
The Reward of Significance
Finding significance can be profoundly rewarding when success alone no longer fulfils you.
Charles McLachlan is the founder of FuturePerfect and on a mission to transform the future of work and business. The Portfolio Executive programme is a new initiative to help executives build a sustainable and impactful second-half-career. Creating an alternative future takes imagination, design, organisation and many other thinking skills. Charles is happy to lend them to you.