Is Your Definition of Success Yours?
Don’t Be Like The Black Slave Owner
My only dream a decade ago was to become a professional footballer.
I spent hours training and developing my understanding of the sport.
The majority of my peers had been playing since they were seven.
I started at thirteen.
I always felt like I was playing catch-up but this made me work harder to make up for all the lost time.
My first big break came at fifteen — just two years after I started taking the sport seriously.
I was given a scholarship at a professional football club.
This meant I could do what I loved five days a week and get paid in the process.
Major win!
But things got real when I officially joined the youth team.
Up until that point, I had barely seen the people in my age group.
I’d been pushed up to play with the older years cos they thought I needed a harder challenge — basically, I was too good for my age group (in their eyes).
My first chance to meet my age mates properly was when we all became youth team players.
That’s when I came to realize there was another guy who played in my position that was given a scholarship…
He was 6’1 and came through the ranks at Norwich City; a team between the Premier League and Championship (the first and second-best leagues in England).
Norwich let him go cos they didn’t see him going through the ranks at their club so he dropped down the league to increase his odds of breaking through as a professional player.
When he played, the ball stuck to his foot like he had glue on his boot and his technique was admirable.
I’m 5'9 and had no prior professional training. I was still quite raw but had undeniable talent.
In normal circumstances, the competition wouldn’t be an issue.
… But these weren’t normal circumstances.
The club we played for was small.
They were in the 4th tier of English football and were broke.
The financial policy they followed meant they could only afford to keep on two players from the youth team each year.
Keeping two players in the same position was bad for business.
Only one of us could make it.
There’s no doubt we were both talented, but it wasn’t about that.
I don’t think either of us would admit it at the time, but we spent most of our youth team career trying to outdo each other.
From the first day until the last few months of our two-year scholarship, we were at each other’s necks.
If he dropped a shoulder to get around a player, I’d drop a shoulder and go past two players — the opposite was true too.
It was always about one-upping the other.
But in the last few months of our scholarship, something hit me…
I realized my goal wasn’t about being better than Nathan Ferguson; it was to become a world-class professional footballer.
I had made one of the most common mistakes people make in life today…
I was using someone else’s definition of success.
Billy Bean & the Oakland A’s
A while back, I read a book (and watched a movie on Netflix) called Moneyball.
It’s about the struggles of an ex-major league baseball (MLB) player called Billy Bean and how he rose to stardom as the general manager of Oakland Athletics.
The club didn’t have much money but Billy had his own values for the way things should be done in Baseball.
He believed in data, so he hired a team of data professionals to come in and help.
This was the first time geeks and baseball athletes sat together.
They used their knowledge of data to carefully identify the statistics that matter most for a team that wants to win.
This helped them to find players who were often overlooked and could be snapped up for a lower fee.
… But before the Oakland A’s adopted their data-driven approach, they, like every other team, relied upon the feedback of talent scouts.
Most of these talent scout guys had been around the game for a while and had developed their intuition for what a player with a high ceiling looks like.
Their judgment was based on the player's ability to run, throw, field, and hit the ball with power.
Billy Beane thought this approach sucked…
It didn’t spot players who were effective but didn’t “look the part.”
He thought MLB teams were using the wrong metrics to measure the potential of players.
The only reason they kept using them is cos that’s how things were always done.
This feat is a common occurrence in daily life…
For many, it goes under the radar but for others, it’s more evident.
You see… The world we live in is super-invasive.
Everywhere you look, there’s a marketer or salesperson using some psychological trick to sell you something or get your attention.
Just take a look on X (Twitter) at how many people there are sharing stories of how they make $100k per month and all the other stories.
That’s not to discredit them or anything…
I’m just focused on what it does to YOU!
All of these inputs compound to form your definition of success.
Now you’ve got:
- Freelancers who don’t think they’re succeeding unless they’re making upward of $10,000 a month.
- Women who are upset cos they’re not married by 30.
- Creators who think they need 100,000 followers to make money online.
Their definition of success is not theirs.
They took it from someone else.
The black slave owner
Dave Chapelle once gave an interesting example of an ex-slave turned slave owner during one of his stand-up specials…
The man was from South Carolina and was granted his freedom by his master.
When his master granted the man his freedom, he also gave him a plot of land.
But this man was no ordinary person…
He was one of the best farmers owned by the master.
The master would often let the man know how good he was and regularly gave him rewards since the slave made him rich.
When the slave was free, he knew he had to capitalize on his farming abilities…
He got to work on the plot of land given to him by his former owner.
This made the ex-slave extremely wealthy.
When he got the money the first thing he did was buy slaves.
The man became an aggressive slave breeder and applied tactics that were so cruel that even white slave owners would question them.
Why would he do that?
That’s just how success was flaunted in their days.
He never had his own definition.
If you had money back then but didn’t have slaves you were breeding and selling, then you didn’t have money.
The ex-slave adopted the definition of success for the time — slave ownership, breeding, and selling.
I can even imagine him feeling like his success from farming was illegitimate until he bought his first slave.
There’s two lessons I took from this story:
- If you don’t have a definition of success for yourself, it will be given to you by someone else.
- If you’re not clear on what you’re measuring yourself against (the definition of success is not clear) then you can’t have intentional behavior to help you move closer to achieving it.
If your definition of success is given to you by someone else, you’ll always be in competition with others.
Just imagine if the black slave owner's neighbor had more slaves than him.
Good lord…
He’d probably work his slaves ten times harder so he could earn more to buy more slaves just so he can be better than his neighbor.
The second lesson is a bit more subtle cos you have to ask “What if?”
“What if the black slave owner didn’t adopt the definition of success given to him but couldn’t articulate his own?”
While we don’t know the answer to that question directly, we can take lessons from ourselves…
“I need to be more disciplined.”
“I need to stop procrastinating.”
“I need to…”
Sound familiar?
When you don’t have a clear definition of success, your metrics won’t give you enough feedback on what needs to be improved.
… So you just pick on a bunch of random things that sound ideal for success but are actually just by-products of having a well-defined definition of success.
This makes you feel like you have a whole load of things you should be doing, but can’t find the motivation to fulfill them.
The underlying reason is simple: you’re not sure how doing the thing benefits you, you’ve just heard good.
My charge to you…
Take time to think about what success means to you.
Define it.
The more specific and clear you get, the more you can train yourself to go after it.
Just look at what happened when I realized my goal was to become a professional footballer…
My metrics changed.
I stopped trying to be better than Nathan Ferguson and focused on the things that mattered.
It was no longer about how cool I looked when I dribbled past a player…
It was now about how much influence I had on the pitch without screaming and shouting.
I wanted everyone I played with to feel like they had a chance of winning as long as I was on their team.
This meant each game, I had to track:
- How many shots I took
- How many of them were on target
- How many goals I scored
- How many passes I made that led to goal-scoring opportunities
- The number of assists I made
- Everything that increased the odds of my team scoring more goals than the other team.
These were the metrics that mattered for someone world-class in my position.
It completely changed the way I played; all I cared about was getting myself in positions to increase those metrics.
… but before I was clear on my goal, I was putting myself in positions where I could show how much I was better than Nathan Ferguson.
This didn’t always benefit the team, which meant I could be taken out of the equation and they wouldn’t feel the impact of me not being there.
If you feel like you’re competing with someone else, you’re using someone else’s definition of success.
Don’t be like the black slave owner.
Take time to define your own version.
You’ll quickly realize you’re not in competition with anyone but yourself.
If you feel like you’ve got a lot of things you’ve got to do, you’re probably not clear on your definition of success.
Take time to define what success means to you!
Once you get clear, the metrics will reveal themselves.
For example, if you wanna be a millionaire, you know you gotta measure your net worth.
This small act of measuring your metrics will define your behaviors.
Piggybacking on the millionaire example…
Don’t be surprised if you start studying how to increase your net worth.
Final thoughts
How you define success determines the yardstick you use to measure it.
If you’re using someone else’s definition, you’ll always feel like you’re in competition and if your definition isn’t clear your metrics won’t give you any meaningful feedback.
In both instances, my answer is the same…
Take time to get clear on what YOU want then track the metrics that matter.
This will ignite fierce competition between you and yourself which will push you to become better.
Thanks for reading!
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