Reimagining our metrics of success
Embracing Regenerative Living Through Values-Based Metrics
It’s mid-December. Can you believe it?
At the beginning of this month, I flew to Austria to visit my family, celebrate my mom’s retirement (she threw a big party — very ooo-y of her :)), go skiing, and on a 4-day yoga retreat in the Austrian mountains. It was divine.
In between skiing and yoga retreat, I was also invited to facilitate and be a speaker at a couple of events. All on the theme of rest & regeneration, which I thought I’d take as a signal to dedicate this month’s newsletter to this theme.
Almost all living things, especially in colder climates, shut down to regenerate during the winter months to be prepared to flourish come spring. Nature itself designed for various rhythms and cycles. Your heartbeat consists of contraction and recovery. Animals hibernate and migrate according to the season. Sproutlings and plants rest during the winter before shooting out again in spring. Some plants, such as proteas (my fav plants from my 2-month trip to Cape Town last year), have seeds with a hard shell that require mortality — the heat from fire — to break open so they can sprout. All of these ecosystems are resilient largely because they have built-in phases for rest and regeneration.
In my recently published booklet, “Reimagining our Nature of Work” we look at the different components needed to help us reimagine and design a more healthy and regenerative culture of work.
As we’re now moving into a slower season and peak reflection time, I want to highlight the first step of this process and invite you to reflect on it over the coming weeks 👇
Redefining Success: Embracing Regenerative Living Through Values-Based Metrics
An extract from our Reimagining The Nature of Work. In this chapter, my friend
and I explored how we might redefine metrics of success so that they’re based on what we personally value, rather than on what a few have defined as standard.
The quest to design a regenerative way of living is incomplete without an examination of success. From the moment we arrive on this planet, we’re molded and shaped to strive. This pursuit is evolutionary — to succeed means we’ve survived. But to live a regenerative life, we need to question the quality of our survival.
Is it success if we’ve reached the highest heights, but feel empty inside?
Everywhere we turn in society, there are clear warning signs of overconsumption yet undernourishment. Our modern lives give us access to everything we might ever need — yet we’re starved for the fundamentals of our humanity: vitality, belonging, and peace of mind and spirit. A singular focus on conventional success (both at the individual and societal levels) has left us collectively exhausted. Which begs the question — is our pursuit of conventional success serving us? And what might we strive for instead?
As we more deeply explore the topic of success, two challenges surface. The first is that our conventional definition is wildly limiting. The second is that success is wildly elusive — the more we have, the more we’re going to want. And the more the former is emphasized, the more the latter becomes a problem. Let’s break it down together.
In the race to pursue traditional growth and success (defined via money, safety, and status) we often deprioritize other crucial aspects of our lives — our health and well-being, our relationships and community, our hobbies and interests, and so on. All the things that give our life color and meaning fall to the background, silently wondering when we’ll come around and give them a second look.
It’s human nature to desire more — and this isn’t inherently a bad thing. But if we emphasize things that, upon achieving, continue to leave us hollow and lacking inside, we end up doing something really harmful: continuously reinforcing and compounding that emptiness.
On the flipside, by widening our definition of success — both at the individual and collective/organizational level — we give ourselves more chances to really feel successful. When we find success in how we show up for our friendships or our colleagues, or our ability to learn new things and experience new cultures, or the way we persevere through challenges or how well we take care of ourselves, there’s more and more evidence that success is all around us.
How might we learn to calibrate to this new definition of success, and shift into the rhythms of regenerative growth?
Our best anchor is our personal values. When we drop what it means to be successful at a societal level, and instead embrace our own curiosities, gifts, and points of view, we build our own compass. That compass tells us when we’re on or off course, when we’re successful by our own definitions or not. It’s deeply felt instead of simply observed — and the more we invest in our personal values, the harder it is to veer off course from them. From this place, traditional means of success are used to amplify our value system, rather than detract from it. It’s not the enemy, but rather an aid to live our fullest potential.
Think about this 👇
What are the biggest differences between your external perception of success and the metrics you’ve picked up in your life through others vs. your inner world – the part of yourself that’s deep within you and that only a few might have perceived so far?
Now it’s time to redefine new metrics.
Based on the image or scribbles you’ve made, what are the categories of life that you want to put your energy into and measure your success by?
The beauty and the complexity of this approach is that each person (or organization) has their own understanding of what it means to be successful. Embracing differences and complexity is key to nature, and it’s what leads to thriving, regenerative ecosystems.
Using values as an anchor, we find those that are aligned or complementary to grow and expand with us. It’s a natural process rather than a forced one. It’s steeped in collaboration and compassion rather than competition. It fuels within us a sense of belonging, a sense of gratitude, and a deep desire to grow what makes us feel the most alive.
I hope this excerpt provides you with prompts and ideas to reflect upon as you’re wrapping up the year and serves as the foundation for envisioning a more regenerative approach to work 🐌
If you want to get the whole book (which is full of prompts, exercises and spaces to scribble and reflect like the ones above) and dive in more deeply, you can order the booklet here.
Thank you so much for being here and supporting this newsletter this year, it means the world to me 🧡
We’ve been working on a lot of new things in the background, so I’m really REALLY excited to launch more opportunities for you all to get involved with Out of Office and lean into the ethos of creative ways of living in the coming months. This includes a Creative Residency, an Out of Office Fellowship, a new content format, and a super fun merch drop 🔥 Stay tuned ☺️
And if you’re still looking for a little present for someone who you think would enjoy this newsletter, lean more into the themes we’re talking about, and be some of the first to enjoy our new offerings, you can gift them a subscription here 🎁