When I began the process of starting my own business, I discovered an important piece of who I was: A large portion of my self-esteem was connected to my achievements. Throughout my whole life, I was constantly in a position where I was told how to do things and how well I met expectations. Whether I meant to or not, I started tying any positive feedback I received in with my personal worth. I knew I was doing things the “right way” because everyone told me I was.
This worked until I was no longer getting that kind of reinforcement. When I left my job and became my own boss, success and accomplishment became much muddier than I ever imagined. Suddenly, there wasn’t anyone telling me how I was doing, if I was good enough, or if what I was doing was going to amount to anything. Ah! Panic!
In some ways, this shift was a bit of an ego death for me, and I had to find a new way to see the value of myself. Luckily, I had a great friend by my side to help me. The summer after I left my job, my friend Lizzy and I would walk and talk together for hours and hours at a neighborhood park. Many life experiences were shared during these walks, and I frequently took away new perspectives on life.
During one of these walks, I was expressing my frustration to Lizzy about a job that I had applied for a couple months prior. It was in Seattle, a city I would have loved to move to, and was with a company that stood for everything I did. It was love at first site. I even created a video to submit along with my resume so they could see how great of a fit it was.
As life works sometimes, the job offer I expected never came. Neither did a reject. Despite a great deal of persistence and effort on my end to make it work, a whole lot of nothing happened. I told Lizzy that I was doubting myself because I was so sure that this job was the next step for me, and clearly, I was wrong.
Lizzy asked me a question then that I had never considered. “What did you get out of applying for that job?” After stammering around for a while, I said that Dan and I learned how to make a video and realized that we were a natural team at co-creating and editing film. It was the start to us creating many more videos together. And Lizzy just looked at me and smiled. 
The bigger lesson I learned from all of this is that sometimes things don’t show up the way we expect them too. Sometimes success isn’t the job offer or the thumbs up from a boss. There are times when success is stumbling across a new gift you have and learning where it can take you in life. I am still learning the application of this lesson but I must say, redefining the way I look at personal success has resulted in me respecting myself more than I ever have before. 