From one of my favorite, most accessible, Myers-Briggs resources, I learned that — depending on your nature — your idea of success may depend on:

• Your ability to improve situations — using common sense to make the most of situations;
• The aesthetics of your environment;
• A level of structure that keeps chaos at bay;
• Making things happen for other people — and enjoying the accomplishment and satisfaction of those you’ve helped;
• Developing your creative abilities;
• Opportunities to increase your understanding of the world around you;
• Increasing your personal level of understanding, accomplishment, competence;
• Exercising your active mind by using logic to uncover Truths;
• An open road — full opportunities and free space and time — to use your intuition to think about all aspects and angles of subjects that interest you.
• The condition of your closest relationships;
• Staying true to your personal value system;
• Feeling valued for your personal contribution;
• Exuberant, full, open, outward engagement with other people;
• Mastery in/of aspects of the physical world;
• Caring for and about others and feeling their reflected happiness and gratitude;
• Ordering the world in a way which is safe and secure while also balanced against genuine respect for aesthetics and quality of life;
• Outwardly expressing what grips you — your talents, appreciations, joys — before the world;
• Providing value for others;
• Moments of achievement — of feeling you’ve won the day;
• Creating, sustaining, and/or living within defined principles;
• The health and welfare of family, work, and/or church — and your ability to use your experience to benefit family, work, or church; and/or
• Serving people in need, fighting injustice, or otherwise making the world a better place to be.

I am finding that it’s important for me to consciously remember that:

ALL of those conditions of success — and their many combinations — are great.

I do not have to have the same idea of success for myself that other people have for themselves.

Other people may not and do not need to have the same idea of success that I have. I want others to feel success on their terms — not on mine.

All this is especially true for those I love. And especially hard to remember. What if our ideas of success seem to clash? What if — hypothetically! —  my thirst for ever deeper exploration of meaning seems to interfere with a beloved’s desire for a safe and beautiful life?

I am liking the theory that all of our success ideas can exist mutually.

 Likely the world is this gorgeous only because they all DO exist and thrive together.

But on the most practical level, I realize that I do indeed want you to pursue your idea of success. I will pursue mine, I will be thrilled as I am achieving my successes, and I will be so thoroughly happy as you are achieving yours because I love you.