Reframing Success: Redefining what actually matters most

A few months ago, my parents sold the house I grew up in, finally closing a chapter after a long and complicated divorce (aren’t they all?).

With the sale came boxes of my childhood… things I once insisted on keeping, but didn’t quite want to carry into my small apartment.

I decluttered it all down to a single 20-gallon tub 📦 filled with high school yearbooks, a few cards, and my grandmother’s coat.

Just when I thought I had everything, my dad appeared with my college diploma, still in its aggressively tacky, branded university frame. With my name printed largely on it, there was no way I could pawn it off on him, so it joined the tub in the trunk of my car, sliding around for months like a relic I couldn’t quite figure out what to do with. 🚙

I kept thinking: Where would I even hang this?

Sure, I was proud of earning it. But I didn’t feel the need to display it.

What’s strange is that I’ve always been someone who valued education deeply. As a kid, my parents used to say, “Education is the only thing no one can take away from you.” And that really stuck with me. 🧠

When I was little I used to imagine wild, movie-like scenes where I was kidnapped, 🪑 hands tied behind my back in a hostage situation, and my knowledge somehow saved the day. 🦹🏻‍♀️

Dramatic, I know 💅🏼, but it motivated me to keep learning, and keep collecting credentials, just in case.

But lately, my definition of success has started to shift.

Instead of going to grad school, I took yoga trainings. While friends pursued master’s degrees, I became a Reiki Master and completed my 500-hour Yoga Teacher Training.

There was a time where those certificates felt meaningful enough to frame, but even those are starting to come down.

These days, I’d rather fill my space with art, or photos of the people I love. 💗

I still value learning, but I’m becoming less and less interested in proving it.

I’ve been asking myself: What does a certificate really mean if the transformation is just beginning?

Especially as a teacher in this somewhat unregulated world of wellness. Someone who regularly and reluctantly, hands out certificates for single weekends of study…

Knowing a piece of paper could never come close to articulating the changes that have happened within the space of my heart, or the minds of my students.

And while it’s easy to cling to the paper as proof of something, I’m realizing you can’t frame growth, and it’s not something I want to put in an 8x10 box anyways. 

So the certificates came down. In their place: art that makes me feel something, reminders of who I’m becoming, not just what I’ve accomplished. 🖼

My Bachelor’s degree is still bouncing around in my trunk for now, and maybe one day, when I have lots of wall space to fill, it’ll find a home once again. 

But even then, and especially now, I see that success isn’t where I’ve been or where I’m going, it’s where I am, right here, right now. 🧘🏻‍♀️

This moment is the only thing that actually exists. 📍

So while we grovel through these last few days of retrograde, here’s an invitation to reconsider what you’ve been framing, and notice if it’s still worth hanging up.

I’m proud of you, either way.

xoxo,
Lindsay