“Your authenticity, your messy beautiful humanity, your unique way of moving through the world—these aren’t flaws to fix. They’re the very things that make you irreplaceable. The world doesn’t need you to be perfect. It needs you to be present. It needs your particular kind of courage and your special way of seeing and solving problems.”
Before sitting down to interview the author of this upcoming book, I read their work, and this passage stopped me. It resonated with everything that drives me in life and work.
The idea that each of us is a piece of a much bigger puzzle. And that your piece, the exact shape of you, fits perfectly into a life that feels good to live. You don’t need to become someone else to build a meaningful life. You need to embrace who you already are.
Not in a lazy “anything goes” way, but in the authentic, truthful way that makes you proud of yourself. Not because of anyone else’s approval, but because it’s aligned with who you fundamentally are.
“Today, for the first time, I realized that my gentleness isn’t a weakness - it’s my superpower. I don’t have to choose between being successful and being me.”
When I read that line, my soul whispered back: “I choose to be me to be successful.”
That same week, I ended up in a conversation with a friend on LinkedIn. We were reacting to a post about how few “truly successful” LinkedIn accounts exist, even with all the tech, AI and tools available.
We both agreed and wondered: success depends on the measuring stick you use. So, which one do you use? Numbers isn't the only game. Not for an introvert anyway.
For me, success means embracing who I am rather than chasing someone else’s metrics, metrics I have no control over anyway. If you can’t live and express yourself in a way that feels true, then what is all of this for? At the end of the day, the real scoreboard is simple: Are you fulfilled? Are you proud of the way you lived today?
My personal mission has 2 parts:
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To express and explore the depth of who I am and my unique contribution to something bigger.
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To create opportunities for others to do the same.
The more I live by that, the more “successful” I feel. And if that doesn’t match someone else’s definition? So what?
Which brings me to this: before you pour your life’s most limited resource - time - into chasing someone's definition of success, pause and ask:
What does success mean to ME? And am I going after that, or someone else’s version of it?