We’ve been measuring the wrong things
If outward success is the only thing we measure, we are missing most of the story.
When I ask people how they know they are doing well—or how they know they are important—I often hear some version of the same answers.
We look at:
How successful we are and what opportunities are coming next
The number of degrees, certifications, or accomplishments we have collected
How much money we make or what we can afford
The size of our home or the things we own
The number of people we manage
The businesses or organizations we have built
Our influence, visibility, growth, or productivity
And it makes sense.
These are the things we have been taught to measure.
They are visible. They are easy to compare. They give us something concrete we can point to and say, “Look. I’m doing well.”
But those measurements only tell us part of the story.
They can tell us what someone has accomplished.
They cannot tell us what accomplishing it has done to them.
Across my work as a founder, Executive Director, CEO, consultant, coach, and board member, I have seen the same pattern repeatedly:
A person can produce extraordinary results through a deeply unhealthy system.
And because we tend to measure the result rather than the system that produced it, we still call that success.
We rarely stop to ask:
How does this person actually feel about themselves?
Can their body and mind sustainably support the pace they are living at?
Are they approaching burnout—or creating a culture where everyone around them has to operate near burnout to keep things moving?
What do their relationships look like?
Can they rest without guilt, shame, or anxiety?
What happens to their sense of worth when something goes wrong?
Are the people around them flourishing too?
Those questions matter because a successful result does not necessarily mean the system producing it is healthy.
I learned this the hard way.
For anyone unfamiliar with my story, I have a long background in nonprofit leadership.
I started an organization I deeply loved when I was sixteen years old and spent the next ten years helping build and lead it.
It was a wild, beautiful, complicated experience that shaped so much of who I am. I will always be grateful for it.
But when I was younger, I became consumed with making the organization successful.
I worked on it constantly.
I missed days of school to give presentations. I spent evenings and weekends working alongside my cofounder. I poured enormous amounts of time, energy, and attention into keeping everything moving.
And from one perspective, it worked.
The organization ran.
Programs happened.
People were served.
Things got done.
But underneath that success was an incredibly fragile system:
me.
I was the contingency plan.
I was the infrastructure.
I was the person filling the gaps.
The organization functioned beautifully when I was available to hold it together 24/7.
When I wasn't, things fell through the cracks.
Instead of building systems that could support the mission, I often sacrificed more of myself to support it.
Time with friends.
Time with family.
Rest.
Boundaries.
Eventually, the organization became deeply intertwined with my identity.
When things were going well, I felt proud of myself.
When they weren't, the weight felt incredibly personal.
There was very little separation between the success of the organization and my perception of my own worth.
So when my life eventually changed and the amount of time and energy I could give the organization changed too, something else changed with it:
The way I saw myself.
That experience forced me to confront something I didn't have language for at the time.
I had built something successful without necessarily building something sustainable.
And, perhaps more importantly, I had learned how to measure the success of the work without knowing how to measure what the work was doing to me.
We have become very good at measuring results while ignoring the human system producing them.
The older I get—and the more leaders, founders, teams, and organizations I work with—the more convinced I become that we need a more complete way of evaluating how we are doing.
That doesn't mean success is bad.
Build the company.
Earn the degree.
Grow the organization.
Make the money.
Reach the goal.
Create meaningful work.
Celebrate the accomplishment.
I am not interested in pretending achievement doesn't matter.
I am interested in asking whether achievement is enough information to tell us that something is actually going well.
Because success is an outcome.
It doesn't automatically tell us whether the process creating that outcome is healthy, sustainable, or humane.
So I want to invite you to begin measuring more of the story.
You don't need to overhaul your life this week.
For now, simply pay attention.
Start with your inner life.
Notice what happens inside of you while you move through your normal days.
What happens internally when you're working?
When you're having fun?
When you're alone?
When you're around other people?
When you're resting?
When you aren't being productive?
Don't immediately try to fix what you notice.
Get curious.
Write things down.
Start making connections.
Look at your relationships.
Consider the relationships that matter most to you—personal, professional, romantic, familial, and even the relationship you have with yourself.
How do they feel right now?
Connected?
Strained?
Safe?
Distant?
Supportive?
Neglected?
Again, this isn't about judging yourself.
It's about gathering information.
Your relationships tell you something about the life you are building.
Look at your capacity.
How are your mind and body doing in this season?
Are you constantly exhausted?
Are you taking care of yourself?
Do you feel like your current pace is sustainable?
Or are you running on empty and hoping nothing else gets added to the list?
Sometimes we become so accustomed to functioning beyond our capacity that exhaustion starts to feel normal.
It isn't irrelevant data.
It tells us something.
Then look at your relationship with achievement.
Pay attention to what happens when you win.
Can you enjoy it?
Can you celebrate?
Can you let something be enough for a moment?
Or does your mind immediately jump to the next goal?
And pay just as much attention to what happens when you don't win.
Can you recover from disappointment?
Or does failure quickly turn into a judgment about who you are?
Do you become harsh with yourself?
Withdraw?
Overwork to compensate?
Become impatient with the people around you?
Do you feel like you need to prove yourself again as quickly as possible?
Our responses to both success and failure can reveal where achievement has become connected to identity, worth, safety, or belonging.
And all of that information matters.
Because maybe we have been measuring the wrong things.
Or, more accurately, maybe we haven't been measuring enough things.
This brings us to a bigger question.
If success is incomplete as a measurement, what should we measure instead?
I think we need to move beyond asking only:
“Is this successful?”
And begin asking:
“Is this flourishing?”
Flourishing gives us a wider lens.
It asks us to consider the outcome, yes—but also the person producing it.
The relationships surrounding it.
The systems sustaining it.
The health of the people involved.
The conditions being created along the way.
Success can tell us that something worked.
Flourishing asks whether the way it worked is helping create a life, organization, community, or person we actually want to become.
We'll spend much more time unpacking flourishing because I believe this distinction matters deeply.
But for now, start here:
Spend the next week observing your inner life, relationships, capacity, and relationship with achievement.
Write down your current definition of success. What tells you that you are “doing well”?
Compare that definition with what you observed. What does your current definition measure well—and what does it completely ignore?
Identify what you want to continue cultivating and what you may need to begin changing.
This isn't an argument against success.
It's an invitation to stop confusing visible achievement with the whole story.
Because success can tell us something about what we've accomplished.
But it cannot, by itself, tell us who we are becoming in the process.
And maybe the goal isn't to become less successful.
Maybe the goal is to build a kind of success that does not require us to sacrifice our wholeness in order to sustain it.
