There’s a funny thing that happens when you’re asked what you want to be when you grow up.
Nobody expects a 10-year-old to say, “Ideally, I’d like meaningful work, a reasonable amount of autonomy, enough money to feel secure, people I enjoy working with, and the flexibility to go to a dentist appointment without submitting a formal request three weeks in advance.”
You’re supposed to say veterinarian.
Or astronaut.
Or teacher.
Then you grow up, start working, and somehow the definition of success gets even narrower.
Get the job. Get promoted. Make more money. Manage more people. Buy the house. Grow the business. Get another promotion. Keep going.
Up, up, up.
And maybe that is exactly what you want.
But what happens when it isn’t anymore?
What happens when the version of success you spent years working toward stops feeling particularly successful?
Here’s something we probably don’t say enough:
You’re allowed to change your mind.
Success Has a Sneaky Way of Becoming a Checklist
Most of us don’t sit down at 22 and thoughtfully design a personal definition of success.
We absorb one.
From our parents. Our friends. Our industry. Social media. The people we went to school with. The person on LinkedIn announcing her fourth promotion before you’ve finished your first cup of coffee.
Without realizing it, you can end up chasing milestones simply because they seem like the next logical thing to chase.
And there’s nothing wrong with wanting those things. A bigger paycheck is great. A promotion can be exciting. Growing your business can be deeply satisfying.
The problem starts when you stop asking whether you still want them.
Maybe five years ago, your goal was to manage a big team.
Now you’d rather be an individual contributor doing work you love.
Maybe you dreamed of building a huge business.
Now you’re realizing you’d rather have a smaller, profitable business that doesn’t require you to answer emails during dinner.
Maybe stability once sounded boring, and now it sounds absolutely luxurious.
Maybe you spent years wanting to work from home and have discovered that being alone with your laptop five days a week makes you slightly feral.
People change.
Life changes.
Your priorities are allowed to change with them.
Changing Your Priorities Doesn’t Mean You’ve Lost Your Ambition
This is an important one, especially for women.
We’ve gotten pretty comfortable with a very specific picture of ambition: more responsibility, bigger titles, higher salaries, bigger businesses.
So when someone says, “Actually, I don’t want that anymore,” we sometimes assume she’s pulling back.
But ambition isn’t one thing.
Recent research from Lean In is a good example. Despite plenty of conversation about younger women supposedly rejecting ambitious careers, its 2026 research found that 92% of women under 30 want to be promoted. Young women aren’t collectively throwing their laptops into the ocean and abandoning their careers. They still want to grow—they’re also asking harder questions about what they want that growth to look like.
Gallup’s research tells a similar story. Women place significant value on work-life balance and personal wellbeing when considering jobs, and flexibility can influence whether women want full-time employment.
Wanting a career that fits your life isn’t the opposite of ambition.
It might just mean you’re getting more specific about what you’re ambitious for.
Maybe you’re ambitious about becoming an executive.
Maybe you’re ambitious about becoming financially independent.
Maybe you’re ambitious about building something that’s yours.
Maybe you’re ambitious about doing excellent work without making work the center of your entire personality.
All count.
Try Separating “More” From “Better”
Here’s a useful question:
If nobody else knew about it, would I still want it?
No LinkedIn announcement.
No impressive title on your email signature.
No opportunity to casually mention it at a high school reunion.
Would you still want the promotion?
Would you still want to double your business?
Would you still want the bigger house?
Would you still want to manage 20 people?
Sometimes the answer will be an enthusiastic YES.
Great. Go get it.
But sometimes you’ll realize you’ve been pursuing more without stopping to ask whether more would actually make your life better.
Those aren’t always the same thing.
Figure Out What You’re Actually Optimizing For
Instead of asking, “What should I do next?” try asking:
“What do I want my life to feel like?”
That’s a very different question.
Maybe you want:
- More financial security
- More flexibility
- More challenging work
- More creativity
- More time with your family
- More independence
- More community
- More stability
- More leadership
- More time outside of work
- More opportunities to learn
- Fewer Sunday-night stomachaches
And yes, wanting more money is allowed to be on the list.
We’ve somehow made talking about meaningful work very respectable while saying “I’d like to make more money” feels slightly scandalous.
Money matters. So does time. So does purpose. So does flexibility.
The point isn’t choosing the correct priority.
It’s figuring out yours.
Do a “Success Audit”
Here’s something worth trying when you have 20 quiet minutes and preferably a beverage you enjoy.
Write down your current definition of success.
Don’t make it sound impressive. Nobody is grading this.
Then ask yourself:
What parts of this definition are actually mine?
What am I pursuing because I genuinely want it?
What am I pursuing because it seems like what I’m supposed to want?
What mattered enormously to me five years ago that doesn’t anymore?
What matters to me now that barely registered five years ago?
If my life looked basically the same three years from now, how would I feel about that?
That last one can be especially revealing.
Because sometimes you’ll realize, Actually, pretty good.
Not everything needs disrupting.
Other times your immediate reaction will be, Oh. Absolutely not.
That’s useful information too.
You Don’t Have to Blow Up Your Life to Change Direction
Realizing you want something different doesn’t require dramatically quitting your job tomorrow morning.
Please do not send your resignation email because of a Thrive blog post. 😅
You can experiment first.
This is something the Stanford Life Design Lab teaches through its approach to designing careers and lives: rather than assuming there’s one perfect path you need to identify, you can explore possibilities and prototype different versions of your future. Its free resources even include an Odyssey Planning exercise designed to help you imagine alternative futures.
In real life, experimenting might look like:
- Taking on a project that lets you test a different kind of work.
- Talking to someone who has the career you’re considering.
- Freelancing before deciding whether entrepreneurship is for you.
- Trying a four-day schedule if your employer allows it.
- Taking the class.
- Volunteering for the leadership opportunity.
- Saying no to something you’d normally automatically accept.
- Running the numbers on what you’d actually need to earn to work fewer hours.
- Giving yourself six months to explore instead of demanding an immediate answer.
You don’t need to know exactly where you’re going before you’re allowed to move.
Sometimes you learn what you want by trying something and discovering, Yep, definitely not that.
That’s progress too.
Write Your Own Definition
Another useful exercise comes from the Designing Your Life framework: creating a workview, or your own short explanation of why you work and what makes work meaningful to you.
Their prompts include questions like: Why do you work? What makes work worthwhile? How does work relate to the rest of your life? Where do you feel most engaged?
Those are much better questions than:
What title should I have by 40?
Try finishing these sentences instead:
Success at work means…
Success outside of work means…
I want enough money to…
I want enough time to…
I want my work to give me…
I don’t need my work to give me…
I’m willing to sacrifice ___ for ___.
I’m no longer willing to sacrifice ___ for ___.
That last pair matters.
Because every version of success costs something.
The bigger role might cost you some flexibility.
The smaller business might mean slower financial growth.
Working fewer hours might mean earning less.
Going after the dream might mean giving up some stability.
There isn’t a magical option where you get every good thing simultaneously with zero tradeoffs.
Annoying, we know.
The goal is to choose the tradeoffs that make sense for the life you actually want.
Be Careful Who Gets a Vote
When you start redefining success, other people may have opinions.
Sometimes many opinions.
You don’t want the promotion?
You’re leaving that company?
You want to work less?
You want to work more?
You’re starting a business now?
You’re going back to a regular job?
People tend to evaluate your choices using their definition of success.
That’s human.
But it doesn’t mean they get a vote.
Take advice from people you trust. Listen when someone raises a concern you haven’t considered. Don’t surround yourself exclusively with people who tell you every idea you have is brilliant.
But ultimately, you’re the one who has to live inside the life you’re building.
Make sure you actually like it.
Maybe the Goal Isn’t to Keep Climbing
There’s nothing wrong with climbing.
Go after the promotion. Build the company. Make the money. Take the risk. Sit at the big table.
But do it because you want what’s waiting for you there, not because you’ve been climbing so long that you forgot stopping was an option.
And if your definition of success changes?
You’re allowed to change with it.
You can want more responsibility and later want less.
You can choose stability after years of chasing growth.
You can leave a corporate career to build something of your own—and you can leave entrepreneurship because you’re tired of being the CEO, accountant, IT department, customer service representative, and person who remembers to order printer ink.
You can be incredibly ambitious and still want a life with room in it.
Success isn’t a finish line everyone is racing toward.
It’s much more personal than that.
And maybe one of the most successful things you can do is stop occasionally, look at where you’re headed, and ask:
Do I still want to go there?
If the answer has changed, that’s okay.
You have too.
A Few Resources Worth Exploring
The Stanford Life Design Lab has free exercises and videos for exploring different career and life possibilities, including Odyssey Planning and Designing Your Career.
Lean In’s Women in the Workplace research is worth exploring if you’re interested in how women’s ambition, career advancement, flexibility, and workplace support intersect. Its latest research is also a helpful reminder that wanting work to work better for your life isn’t the same thing as lacking ambition.
And Gallup’s research on what women want from work offers useful context around flexibility, wellbeing, full-time versus part-time preferences, and the factors influencing women’s career decisions.
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