By JoyGenea Schumer with grammar and compilation assistance from Chat GPT
At five years old, my definition of success was simple: Don’t fail a class.
Why? Because back then, I was the kid writing my letters backward, mixing up B’s and D’s and completely unable to tie my shoes. Left, right, bunny ears? Forget it. Shoes were not going to happen.
Thankfully, I had a teacher who attended a conference in the 70s about this “new thing” called dyslexia. She recognized what was going on and brought it to my parents’ attention. I was tested and diagnosed. That was my first big break.
But what they didn’t have language for at the time was everything else about me: the constant fidgeting, the struggle to make friends, the stubborn streak, the brain that worked at warp speed. I was and still am relentless and resilient. That determination helped me survive the school system, even when it didn’t always know how to support me.
Back then, success meant surviving. It meant not being seen as a failure.
But here’s what I wish someone had told me:
If you don’t consciously define what success means to you, life will do it for you. Often using someone else’s definition.
The Problem with Climbing Someone Else’s Mountain
Fast forward to my early twenties. I’d worked a bunch of jobs, still trying to figure out where I fit in the world. Eventually, I went back to college for civil engineering and land surveying. For those who don’t know, civil engineers design roads, bridges, and infrastructure. Land surveyors figure out where all of that gets built.
I graduated with honors, gave a speech at graduation, and landed what I thought was my dream job– a government position with great pay and benefits. On paper, I was successful.
Three years later, I was miserable.
I didn’t feel appreciated. I didn’t feel fulfilled. And I definitely didn’t feel happy.
One day, a close friend pulled me aside and said something I’ll never forget:
“You’ve climbed someone else’s mountain. Now it’s time to find your own.”
That hit hard. Because it was true. I had climbed my father’s mountain logical, secure, and emotionally disconnected. But it wasn’t mine.
So What Is Success?
That was the moment I began asking better questions. I started with this: What if success isn’t just about money or status?
And that led me to explore every area of my life:
- Spiritual beliefs – Am I living in alignment with my purpose?
- Mental and physical health – Am I taking care of my mind and body?
- Relationships and family – Are they healthy and fulfilling?
- Core values – Are my actions aligned with what I truly believe?
- Wealth and finances – Am I building a future, not just surviving the present?
I discovered that success isn’t a single destination. It’s a map with multiple zones and each zone needs attention.
Here is a link if you want to check out a great tool that makes this easy to see for yourself.
Redefining Success: A Life-Long Process
Once I identified what success meant to me, I sought out mentors and coaches to help me grow. I started setting goals that matched my values instead of societal checkboxes.
Now? Success looks a lot different.
I measure it in freedom and autonomy. I measure it in how often I get to choose where and how I work. Like right now I’m writing this from Wisconsin, getting ready for a BMW motorcycle rally (think engineers coming together to get up early and ride motorcycles all day). I call that successful.
I also count the ability to choose what food I eat, cook meals that fuel me, and work with amazing clients from around the world all on my terms. That’s what my success looks like.
Yours might look completely different. And that’s the point.
Let’s Talk About Your Success
Success isn’t one-size-fits-all especially for neurodiverse thinkers. What makes you feel fulfilled may not check a single box for someone else.
If you’re not sure how to define success for yourself yet, good. That means it’s time to explore. Grab a notebook, your phone, or whatever helps you capture your thoughts.
Here are five questions that can start your journey:
- What moments in your life have felt the most fulfilling and meaningful and why?
- Whose approval or recognition do you seek when you feel successful?
- If money, status, and fear weren’t factors, what would you pursue every day?
- What do you want to feel at the end of a week, month, and year?
- When you imagine a life well lived, what kind of impact have you made and on whom?
These may seem like simple questions, but they’re powerful. They help you locate your mountain. They show you how to climb your own definition of success one step at a time.
Final Thoughts
If you’re frustrated, stuck, or unhappy, it might be a sign that you’re living someone else’s version of success.
You deserve better.
You deserve a life that feels like yours on your terms, using your incredible brain, and powered by your personal vision of fulfillment.
Let me know what success looks like for you in the comments. I’d love to hear from you.
And if someone you know is struggling to figure out their path, please share this with them.
You’ve got this.
I’m cheering you on.
JoyGenea, International Neurodiversity Coach
Championing your thriving life
Transcription:
How do you measure success?
I’m asking this because I’ve been thinking about it myself, and it’s something that I’m consistently thinking about.
So I was lucky enough to be diagnosed really early.
So I was 5 years old. My letter—I was switching B’s and D’s, like I was learning the alphabet and I was switching things. And on top of that, I also, um, couldn’t tie my shoes.
They were doing the left-right bunny stuff, and these shoes were never gonna get tied.
And luckily, my teachers had been to one of those teacher conferences—thank goodness they go to those—and she’d learned about a new thing called dyslexia.
And so, she told my parents, “I learned about this new thing. What do you think?” And, uh, yeah, they got me tested.
I was really lucky.
And so they did not, um—while I was diagnosed with dyslexia—they did not notice that I also, um, fidget a lot, move around almost all the time, and, um, don’t make eye contact and did, particularly in school, really struggle with making friends.
All kinds of hints and clues to a variety of other things, but they didn’t have language for any of that at that time.
But what they did have language for was dyslexia.
Why I’m sharing this is because my measure of success, and the way I’ve defined success growing up as a small child, was not failing a class.
And that isn’t the way to live life, is what I turned out to learn.
As I got into college, failed out of college, um, went through an emotional episode that was no fun—but not unremarkable to anybody who is neurodiverse—and then proceeded to need to figure out and redefine what success was.
And it was a journey.
It was a really interesting journey that I went through most of my 20s.
And it doesn’t have to be that complicated.
It is really, um—it’s just really important to understand how you define success, because that is actually how you’re living your life.
That is how you’re setting up your goals.
And if you don’t define success big enough, or if you define success as merely being able to put some food on the table, it’s hard to get past that and start to grow in other areas.
So, in particular, for me—I, oh my gosh—I spent my 20s doing a lot, a wide variety of jobs.
If you ever look at my LinkedIn: wide variety of jobs.
Trying a whole bunch of things.
Realized I could do a lot of those things, but I didn’t want to do a lot of those things.
Here’s the next question: success—the rest of my life?
And so then it became, “What do I want to do for a lot longer in my life?”
And I got asking deeper questions, and with that came, “I’d like a real career and a job.”
So I go back to college, um, graduate with honors—I’m really proud of that, so I’ll share it anytime you want—and, um, for Civil Engineering and Land Surveying Technician.
What that—For most people that may not know, civil engineering is—civil engineers are the people that design the roads and the bridges and infrastructure, the culverts where water flows.
Like, I very much enjoyed engineering.
Um, land surveying—this, it was the best career for me ever.
Land surveying is when you’re outside and you’re figuring out where a house should be built on a lot.
Like, you’re taking in the GPS information to be like, “This is the exact location for—this is how you tell when the engineers build the designs and so forth for the road. It’s how you tell the people how to build the road, like where it actually belongs.”
It’s amazing.
I did that. I got so lucky.
I got a government job, which is one of the best paying jobs in that field.
Um, I worked for one of the best agencies in the state. Like, it was really amazing.
And about three years into it, I was miserable.
I was really unhappy.
Part of it was the job. I didn’t, um, ever intend to sign up to be a snowplow operator, and that has really, um, awful hours, honestly.
When you’re the lowest on the seniority—it’s all union-based—and so I was never gonna get off graveyard shift for snowplowing in the winter, which was how they had that job assigned at the time.
And so I recognized I was gonna need to take a shift, and I was really kind of bitter about it overall.
And a really good friend of mine pulled me aside and said, “Listen, you’ve climbed somebody else’s mountain. You got to the top. Here’s your prize.”
They patted me on the back and they’re like, “Now go find your mountain and climb your mountain.”
And I asked, “How do I do that?”
And they’re like, “Figure it out.”
And that was the first time I really started to dig into my own success and what success might look like.
And I recognized that it wasn’t one area of my life.
At first, I thought it was money.
Well, I had just conquered money and education, as far as I was concerned, and that wasn’t—I didn’t feel, I didn’t feel successful.
I didn’t get up in the morning and go, “Wow, this is an amazing life.” I was like, “Ugh. This is my life.”
That’s a clue, by the way. That’s a clue.
You’re not living in your best, highest self.
There’s still room for improvement and growth.
So that’s when I started to look at the factors of your life.
Um, your spiritual beliefs—was that as strong as I could have it?
My financial beliefs and how I was building wealth and how I was using money and understood it.
That’s when I looked at family. I looked at relationships. I looked at physical health.
I looked at my mental health.
Um, I looked at my values—my core values. Was I living into them? Were my actions in alignment with them?
It was—it was a couple-year journey looking into that.
But boy, once—once—I was able to define the areas that were absolutely the weakest…
By the way, I’ll put a link down below to a really, um, simple, easy program that somebody’s designed that I’m happy to share for them, where you can take a quick little couple of questions and you’ll see where you map out on those areas.
So after I figured that out, then I was able to get coaches and mentors and really start to explore what success looks like.
So, my encouragement for you today—I’m gonna ask some questions.
Use whatever you use for note-taking.
Don’t just use your head, ’cause I promise you it all falls out of that spot.
And let’s go over five questions that I know can really help you to think about success in your life.
Okay, I’m assuming you’ve decided how you’re gonna take your notes.
Here are the questions:
No. 1
What moments in your life have felt the most fulfilling and meaningful—and why?
(Remember, it’s okay to hit pause and actually write this down.)
No. 2
Whose approval or recognition do you seek when you feel successful?
No. 3
If money, status, and fear weren’t a factor, what would you pursue every day?
No. 4
What do you want to feel at the end of a week, at the end of the month, and at the end of a year?
What do you want to feel at those times?
No. 5
When you imagine a life well lived, what kind of impact have you made, and on whom have you made that impact?
These are simple questions, but just answering them—just taking five minutes to jot them down or to have a conversation with somebody—can actually be life-changing and help put you on a journey in many directions.
Once I had an understanding of that, that’s when I was really able to start to explore my next careers, building my business—oh my gosh—all the places I have gone.
For me, by the way, success is measured in all of those areas I mentioned.
And it looks different for me than other people.
For me, I appreciate and find success in having some autonomy in where I work and being able to be slightly mobile.
So right now, I’m coming to you in Wisconsin, preparing to participate with my motorcycles in a BMW motorcycle rally this weekend.
But I needed to get here ahead of time, and I’ll work on location for a little while.
That, to me, is part of being—I consider that highly successful: being able to choose those types of things.
I also consider it very successful to be able to put food on my table and actually choose the food and have it be healthy and what I’ve determined is best for me.
That’s a huge success in my mind.
So what’s successful for me may not be successful for another person.
You need to understand and be able to measure your success and what success means for you.
So that’s what we’re talking about this week—how do you measure success?
And if you don’t know—awesome. That means it’s time to explore.
And that’s what I’m here for.
And that’s what other people want for you—is for you to feel happiness and joy.
Defining what success is is an exploration.
Sometimes you have to start with what it’s not.
And for me, that was one of the biggest places I had to start.
What it was not was what I was feeling in that job, in that life, in that situation.
And I was able to shift all of that.
And it didn’t happen overnight.
You work on it—slowly but surely.
And what I’ll let you in on—a super bonus thing—and that is the fact that it is always changing and evolving.
So thank you for tuning in.
I would love to hear how you define success.
Please follow me. Please leave comments.
Please share this with somebody you might know that’s working on figuring out what success means for them.
Maybe they’re really frustrated.
A lot of times, when people are angry and frustrated and feel stuck, that’s the hint that they have not redefined their success and how they’re measuring it.
Or they have not, um, ever maybe done that, and they’re living somebody else’s success story.
You will not be happy—that’s a misalignment.
You will not be happy in somebody else’s success story.
That only works for them.
You gotta find your success story.
Thanks for the time with me.
I’m JoyGenea, International Neurodiversity Coach, championing for your thriving life.
Thank you. Bye now.