Success: The Quiet Art of Feeling Enough with Niall Lehane — Exploring what truly matters in life, leadership, and legacy.
Success. A small word with a very big shadow. Everyone wants it, few can define it, and nobody seems entirely sure when they’ve actually achieved it. It’s a bit like happiness — you know it when you feel it, but it tends to slip away the moment you try to measure it.
We live in a world that loves metrics. Followers, revenue, square footage, step counts — all numbers that promise to tell us how well we’re doing. But, as Albert Einstein once said, “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” Try fitting that on a PowerPoint slide.
When we ask people to define success, the answers usually come in flavours of “having more”: more money, more freedom, more recognition, more peace of mind. Yet when you look closely, those definitions rarely align. To a monk, success might mean mastering detachment; to a CEO, it could mean ringing the bell on the stock exchange. To a parent, it might be getting the kids out the door with shoes on the right feet. Perspective matters.
The Social Mirage
Part of the trouble is that we’ve outsourced our definition of success to others. The moment we start scrolling, we’re hit with curated highlight reels of people who seem to have it all — the yacht, the abs, the labradoodle named Bentley. It’s easy to feel behind.
But as comedian George Carlin famously quipped, “Trying to be happy by accumulating possessions is like trying to satisfy hunger by taping sandwiches all over your body.” We laugh because it’s true. Success built on comparison is a treadmill — lots of movement, no progress.
Real success often shows up quietly. It’s in the calm after a difficult decision. The pride of finishing something you once doubted you could. The satisfaction of knowing you acted with integrity, even when nobody was watching.
Redefining the Scoreboard
There’s nothing wrong with ambition. Humans are wired to strive — it’s how we got from caves to coffee machines. The problem is when we mistake the scoreboard for the game. Achievements matter, but they’re not the whole story.
Harvard’s long-running Study of Adult Development — which has tracked people for over 80 years — found that the strongest predictor of a happy and successful life wasn’t wealth, fame, or career achievement. It was relationships. The quality of our connections is the truest measure of success. Or, as Maya Angelou put it, “Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”
That definition feels refreshingly human. It doesn’t require a spreadsheet. It just asks that we align who we are with what we do — and that we do it with some joy.
Failure: The Uninvited Guest
No conversation about success is complete without its unruly cousin: failure. We try to avoid it like the plague, but it’s the only route to genuine growth. As Winston Churchill said, “Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”
Anyone who’s ever learned to ride a bike knows this to be true. You don’t master balance by reading about it. You wobble, fall, bleed, and try again. The same applies to life, careers, and relationships. Failure is simply success under construction.
Success in Real Life
So, what does success look like in practice? For some, it’s hitting financial security or career milestones. For others, it’s having time for family, creativity, or community. In truth, it’s deeply personal. One person’s summit is another’s base camp.
Success might mean leaving the office at 5 p.m. without guilt. It might be saying no to something that doesn’t fit your values. It could even be finding joy in the small absurdities of life — like realising the only one who truly cares about your new car’s colour is the neighbour’s cat.
The trick is to define success on your own terms — consciously, honestly, and without apology. Because if you don’t, someone else will define it for you, and you’ll spend your life climbing a ladder that’s leaning against the wrong wall.
The Final Word
Maybe success isn’t a destination at all, but a daily practice — showing up, learning, giving, laughing, loving. Maybe it’s less about having it all and more about being enough.
To borrow from Ralph Waldo Emerson:
“To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children… to leave the world a bit better… to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived — this is to have succeeded.”
Success, then, isn’t something we chase. It’s something we create — quietly, deliberately, and with a smile. Preferably over a good cup of coffee.
