How success has changed for me over the last 20 years
From turning down the biggest job in my career to where I am now
Credit: 20th Century Fox
When I first started out as a journalist around 20 years ago, I had a sharp sense of what success looked like. Success was attaining the top position in my industry – the hallowed throne of editor-in-chief – which would unlock untold power. The respect of my colleagues. Money and status. A wardrobe like Miranda Priestly or Jessica Pearson from Suits. Being able to waggle an embossed business card and watch as every door opened before me.
Journalism is an extremely competitive industry, particularly newsroom journalism, and it is also extremely badly paid in comparison to other industries. It remains inured to things like inflation when it comes to wages, resistant to diversity particularly higher up the chain of command. All of these things combined meant at the beginning of my career, I didn’t expect to get anywhere near an editor role, let alone an Editor-in-Chief (EIC) role.
Yet there I was, around 13 years later, in 2017, working as the Executive Editor for HuffPost in the UK. I was the most senior woman, the most senior person of colour and the EIC’s number two. A week after the EIC handed in his notice and went on to a different role, I was called into the managing director’s office. He was the boss of the parent company who owned HuffPost. I had no idea what it was about, and I remember sighing, thinking about the over-priced artisanal coffee rapidly cooling on my desk.
He told me that the role of Editor-in-Chief was coming up. I said yes, I was aware of that. We had all been gossiping in the canteen about who it might be, dreading the inevitable moment when they’d arrive and change everything we’d been working on.
“I think you should go for it,” he said with a frank and open expression. I’m afraid to say my jaw actually dropped as if I were in a comedy sketch. He continued that if I wanted to go ahead with it, he would endorse me. As I stared at him, part of me was appreciative that this person considered me good enough for the role. But the other part knew there was no way in hell I would ever do it. Not because I didn’t think I could – but because I didn’t want it. However. For most of my career, this was the singular point I had been working towards. Why now, was it something I rejected?
In the main, now that the throne was in sight, I realised I didn’t want it. I had no interest in the power or money that came with it, because I saw the toll it had taken on people in the past. For me, the price was too high. In order to get there, and more importantly hold onto it, I would have to sacrifice sleep, my relationships, my travel bucket list, my mental health, and my sense of serenity. It’s not that I was a stranger to hard work – my entire life has been hard graft – more that I was no longer willing to exchange certain things in order to wear the appearance of success.
A large part of that was because my husband passed away in 2015. It taught me that mental health wasn’t optional and that much of capitalist success tends to erode and weaken our baseline of mental wellbeing. His death also destroyed a lot of my original blueprint. I had felt safety within being married, having a reliable job. Now nothing felt safe, and I needed to work out what truly mattered in life. And mostly importantly – whose – opinion mattered. (Hint: it is always your own, first and foremost).
A fancy job title was merely one facet of success, with none of the transparency about what had to be sacrificed in order to get there. I have yet to see any corporate environment that is beneficial to someone’s mental health in the long term. Besides, the more I saw behind the curtain of what it really took to maintain that type of success, I realised what I wanted most in the world was autonomy. By the time my managing director and I had had that conversation, I was already planning to quit my job and set up my own business – a terrifying endeavour but one I felt was necessary.
When I told a friend about turning down the EIC opportunity, they said in a well-meaning way that being in a position like that could do a lot of good, particularly for women in colour. As someone who has dedicated most of my life trying to get us equity for that demographic, I replied: “When is it enough? Why do I have to sacrifice my life and sanity to be a visible beacon for others, when it is something that is only necessary because of racial inequality? Doesn’t that also affect and take away from my quality of life?” I regret how salty I was but the sentiment remains - no one wins if they martyr their own mental health. Besides, I ended up being able to do just as much if not more on my own, without a stifling company agenda to hold me back.
In that moment, I realised that living your life according to the perception of success, is actually very different to being successful. The perception of success is a big house, big TV, big job title, fat bank balance, money, power, influence.
It’s not to diminish the importance of money in a person’s life – money gives you options and enables you to live – but I think a person’s life can be siphoned off in the pursuit of excessive amounts of money, which is time they will never get back. None of those things make a person immune to illness, and they cannot turn back the clock – and when you consider health and time are priceless, we don’t necessarily calibrate our society around things that reward and champion that.
When you consider that the definition of success is the achieved state of set goals and expectations, the power around what those are, is almost wholly in our hands to shape.
Remembering that has been incredibly important in recent months, after I lost sight of my own success. I’m embarrassed to admit that the convergence of an ailing economy impacting my bank balance, and watching other people’s seemingly stratospheric success unfold on social media, made me wonder if I was failing.
A big part of that has been comparing myself to other people’s success – particularly those who have achieved great success in a short space of time – and wondering if I am truly successful because I haven’t got to where they are yet. An additional layer is age. While I’m a headstrong, confident 40-something woman, I am constantly surrounded by people younger than me on podcasts or in the media reflecting life and success through their own experiences. I’m happy for their success but it has made me wonder if I have missed a window of opportunity around certain things.
Living your life according to the perception of success,
is actually very different to being successful.
Normally these things don’t bother me, but when things feel difficult, or I’m mentally worn out, negative thoughts slip in between the cracks. But I am an eternal optimist, and several things have helped me to recalibrate and get back on track. The first is to remember that success is subjective, and sometimes we are our harshest critics.
Sometimes, I can be so focussed on what I have yet to achieve that I forget what I already have. Part of that is because success is rarely linear. All of the things I’ve achieved are things I didn’t necessarily set out to do. The result of which is that sometimes it can be hard to connect the success of something, with who I am as a person, and how I made that happen.
The second is that possessing a skill and crafting a career, is something that takes years to build, regardless of what business bro podcasts and TikTok would have us believe. There might be a shortcut to making money or having instant fame, but that is not the same as being good at something. I am good at what I do even on my worst day – something I was not in my 20s when I lacked experience and depth.
Take writing as an example. Funnily enough it has taken starting a Substack to remind me of this, but my entire life’s work has coalesced to making this newsletter one of the easiest and most joyous things in my week. Everything I have learned from writing articles, meeting deadlines, crafting sells, knowing what to focus on, editing and being able to write quickly and concisely, has brought me to a place where I can feel how deep that pot of experience is.
The third is that no one knows another person’s journey. We don’t know the obstacles, the feedback, the hard graft they have put into something. We don’t even know how they will cope with big success, and whether they are okay mentally about it. We have to hope they are living their best life, and we must put ourselves in a position where we feel we are enough even without that type of success.
And finally, a reminder that success doesn’t have an age limit. If there is anything to take away from all the incredible older female actresses succeeding this year such as Angela Bassett, Jennifer Coolidge, Michelle Yeoh, Jamie Lee Curtis, not to mention older women taking to the catwalk recently such as Pamela Lee Anderson, success and reinvention can arrive at any age. What matters is that it is something you’ve chosen for yourself versus following a path already laid out.
Success is something keyed to us as individuals. I am appreciative and proud of my career, but for me, it isn’t just about money and influence. It’s how much time I spend with my family, being able to master a recipe, weird little weightlifting wins, learning how to do things around my house, watching my niece grow up, travelling to places I’ve dreamed of. Feeling so confident and skilled at what I do work-wise. Being in love with my life.
It sounds simple but it isn’t. It is a radical act to turn your back on things that are the societal norm. It requires patience when you are at a dinner party and you are surrounded by people who are defined by how much property they own and their bonus percentages. If you can live a life you are proud of, where every drop is squeezed and you get to enjoy every ounce of the juice – that to me is success.
It is so refreshing to read about success in this way, Poorna. Like Elizabeth, I feel so seen.
I have made the mistake of accepting jobs that I had worked so hard towards but actually didn’t want once they were offered to me. Through striving towards something, I had actually grown tired and had no interest in the fancy title, money or status. One job made me absolutely miserable and I thought there was something wrong with me for no longer wanting it! It wasn’t until I understood that success is subjective that I realised what I had got caught up in.
Reading this serves an important reminder to keep checking in with myself to make sure I’m on my path. Thank you, thank you 😊
Jesuuu Poorna! Fuegooo🔥 I loved this so much. To defy those social norms and be fulfilled by your own definition of success is beautiful. Happy dancing to your own beat Poorna 🫶🏽