Does Success Really Mean Happiness?

I’ve seen women all over this city who are not the type who you’d typically consider to be “catches” with adoring men by their sides. And the question that constantly comes up is – why them, not us? Dating here is a nightmare - how did they manage to snag one of the good ones when I know so many fantastic women in Manhattan who are perpetually single, and not by choice. These women are successful, beautiful people who achieve incredible things. But is that actually what is at the root of the issue?

Central to understanding why this happens means taking a look at the definition of what success means. Many women, like myself, come to New York for a career. We are prepared to work incredibly hard for long hours to begin to define who we are as professionals. The ones who succeed at this are able to do three things:

1. Clearly identify their goals and a path as to how to achieve them
2. Actively go after said goals
3. Approach going after these goals with 100% confidence

So, if success was defined mathematically, it would look a bit like this:

Success = clarity + drive + confidence

However, what that also translates into is the idea of knowing exactly what you want. Typically seen as a positive attribute, it makes us more picky. We’ve obtained a skill set that allows us to evaluate things critically and that empowers us to refuse to settle. We select our partners so thoroughly that they end up hitting our highly-specified criteria, but do not necessarily give us what we need. This then leads to perpetual disappointment, followed by insecurities that creep in to new attempts based on past failures.

So how do we break this cycle of bad choices? First, we need to constantly re-evaluate our criteria. Part of learning/growing etc is about evolving, and that includes how we make decisions. More importantly though, we need to drop the baggage – it’s an inhibitor. A good friend at work mentioned to me that the biggest thing he sees girls do is sabotage themselves by not applying the same principle of confidence to their relationships that they do to their other activities.

Instead of constantly questioning, self-doubting etc, we need to start approaching relationships - and everything else - with the attitude of “I’m going to be amazing at this” – not in a cocky way, but in a way that preemptively connotes success. Maybe then we can get out of this cycle of over-analysis & self-doubt, sit back & just enjoy so that, even if it does end, we come out the better for it.