Opening this editorial, you look first to the byline. I instinctively dig through the crevices of my mind to provide a litany of accolades to prove my worth. As a poet, whenever I submit to a publication, I’m asked for exactly that: a list of awards and accomplishments. To our indoctrinated brains, such a request makes sense. It establishes credibility and raises readers’ perceptions of the work exhibited. But why?

People are trapped by the current definition and standards of success. My friend, an avid violinist, informed me of the “[conflation] of musicianship and artistry with the competitions that we’ve won.” A competitional win has weight because it is not shared by many others. By assigning prestige and value to artists based on the accomplishments we have earned in contrast to those others have not, we strengthen success predicated on the scarcity mindset.

According to Tabitha Kirkland, Associate Teaching Professor at the University of Washington’s Department of Psychology (note that this title marks her credibility), the scarcity mindset centers on a fear of limited resources. When someone obtains something, there is less for us. This thinking is laced throughout the media and American rhetoric on success. The New York Times article “What Drives Success?” posits that “for some groups, much more than others, upward mobility and the American dream are alive and well.” By equating achievement of the American dream and upward mobility to success, the underlying message becomes rising where others fall. To be successful is thus to be special, to be better than. The current system is a sieve, filtering our narrative of mistakes and conditionally allowing us joy.

What if success was a journey of personal fulfillment instead? What if we gazed at success with curiosity for ourselves instead of desperation to outdo, to feel like we’re enough?
I don’t know exactly what the future will look like, if competition and capitalism will still be at our core. I do know, however, that I’m chasing others’ definitions of adequacy to satisfy my sense of my own.

So I invite you to celebrate yourself and others not for the wins, but for the values that are essential to your being. Some might argue that removing focus from relative success would reduce the quality of our work because everyone can be successful. However, expanding our definition of success does not make it a universal privilege, but a universal possibility. We each become empowered to create for ourselves.