When Success Stops Belonging to Us

There are certain words that seem harmless until you hold them up to the light of your own life.

“Success” is one of them.

Most of us inherited that word long before we ever had the chance to choose it.

It came bundled with silent expectations, cultural conditioning, and the subtle pressure to prove ourselves.

A word shaped by a world that values outputs more than aliveness, achievement more than authenticity.

So when someone recently asked me, How do you define success?

I felt a tremor — a small internal quake — because the version of “success” I lived inside for most of my life no longer fits who I’ve become.

The more I sat with the question, the more I realized:

I don’t want to use the word at all in the way empire taught me to.

Because success, as empire defines it, is not a definition.

It is a cage.

The Empire of Success We Were Raised Inside

Whether we grew up in a corporate world, a family that prized achievement, a school system built on ranking, or simply a culture that equates busyness with virtue — we learned early that success is something you earn by working harder, doing more, pushing through, and rarely, if ever, resting.

Empire’s version of success sounds like:

• Be indispensable.

• Be productive.

• Be self-sacrificing.

• Be better than your last performance.

• Be grateful, even when you’re drowning.

• Don’t stop. Don’t slow down. Don’t ask for too much.

It is a worldview built on scarcity, where your worth is fragile and must be continually proven.

And it’s not neutral.

It has consequences — real, embodied, soul-deep consequences.

The cost of living by empire’s definition of success is paid in human lives.

It looks like:

• The parent who provides for everyone while quietly disappearing inside their own exhaustion.

• The leader who holds the entire world on their shoulders because they were taught responsibility means never breaking.

• The high achiever who is admired by everyone but known by almost no one.

• The woman who succeeds publicly while privately bearing the weight of everyone’s expectations.

• The human being who cannot rest because rest feels like failure.

Most of us know these stories.

Most of us are these stories.

When success becomes a measure of worth, life becomes a performance.

And here is the deepest truth of all:

Empire’s success asks us to abandon ourselves in exchange for belonging.

The Moment Something Breaks Open

So when the question came — How do you define success? — I felt the old world inside me tremble.

Because I no longer want to chase what exhausts me.

I no longer want to measure my life by how much I produce.

I no longer want to confuse self-sacrifice with love.

And I no longer want to use the word “success” in a way that erases the human being inside it.

So I listened inward.

I let the question breathe.

And slowly, a new definition began to rise — one not shaped by empire, but by sovereignty.

Success as Self-Return: A New Definition

What emerged didn’t feel like a goal or an achievement.

It felt like truth.

A person is successful to the extent that they have the awareness, capacity, and skills to live a life of their own design — rooted in what they authentically desire.

Success becomes less about arriving and more about aligning.

Less about proving, more about choosing.

Less about performance, more about presence.

Let’s go deeper into what this actually means:

1. Awareness

Seeing clearly where we inherited our definitions of worth.

Recognising when we are performing instead of choosing.

Noticing the ways we shrink, overgive, or disappear to maintain an identity we never consciously agreed to.

Awareness is liberation.

It is the moment we remember we have a choice.

2. Desire

Asking — continually —

What do I want? What do I need? What do I desire now?

Desire is not indulgent; it’s sacred.

It is the compass of a sovereign life.

Most of us never learned to ask these questions without guilt.

But a created life requires that we ask them again and again.

3. Alignment

Living in integrity with our truth.

Letting our actions mirror our values.

Making choices that honour our inner knowing.

Allowing ourselves to evolve without apology.

Alignment is not perfection; it is return.

A continual homecoming.

4. Capacity

Building the emotional, relational, and practical skills needed to bring our authentic desires into form.

Learning boundaries.

Learning rest.

Learning how to repair.

Learning how to stop abandoning ourselves, especially when the world is loud.

5. Responsibility

Not burden.

Not martyrdom.

Not empire’s version of “carry the world.”

Responsibility as sovereignty means:

I know my choices ripple,

and I choose consciously how I shape those ripples.

This is success in its original form:

not domination,

not achievement,

not comparison —

but coherence.

A life that feels like your own.

When Success Returns to the Human Being

The more I live into this new definition, the more I see how impoverished the old one was.

Empire’s success leaves the human out.

Our definition brings the human home.

Empire’s success is loud.

This success is quiet.

Empire’s success collapses if you stop performing.

This success deepens every time you pause, breathe, and listen inward.

Empire’s success isolates.

This success connects.

Empire’s success burns people out.

This success brings people back to life.

And maybe this is the heart of it:

Success is not something to chase. It is something to return to — again and again — inside yourself.

It is the courage to stop performing long enough to hear your own becoming.

It is the willingness to create a life that belongs to you, rather than one the world applauds.

It is the ongoing practice of choosing yourself without abandoning others,

and choosing others without abandoning yourself.

This is success beyond empire.

This is success that honours the human soul.

This is success that can actually hold a life.