Redefining success
Reflections on defining success authentically to align with our core positioning
Hello, I’m Hema and welcome to my newsletter First Impression. I help early-stage startups with their positioning, brand, and GTM strategy, and I also write about these topics.
I have been thinking a lot about success. How we define success and how our idea of success can sometimes be misaligned with our essence. In an earlier post, I wrote about how identifying and owning one’s essence is essential for a differentiated and authentic positioning.
As the year draws to an end, I find myself in a more reflective space. In this post, I want to share a personal lesson on how I used to define success, how that created misalignment, and how I repositioned myself.
The trap of optics
Most of us take our cues of success from the world around us. I was no different, and early in my career, I measured success as follows (in no particular order):
More respect
More status and authority
More money
More responsibility
More control
More accolades and admiration
I loo…
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