> ## Content Index
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> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Real Success and Its Definition
- URL: https://www.grantgiles.com.au/real-success-and-its-definition/
- Published: 2022-04-13T10:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-25T05:15:35.000Z
- Description: When we get what we want, we want what we don’t have. A Roaring Heads episode on what real success is, and why it can’t define you.
- Author: Grant Giles
- Tags: Podcast, Mind

When we get what we want, we want what we don’t have!! 

## In this episode

- Why getting what we want leaves us wanting more
- The empty promise of fame and fortune
- Why success can’t define you
- The paradox: the more safety you get, the less safe you feel

It’s a slippery slope, sometimes getting what we want is the worst thing that can happen to us. If it comes easy, it comes greasy, slips through our fingers and then the more we have the less we feel like we’ve got. 

This concept we are sold of fame and fortune is an empty promise, a void with no real substance, people who arrive there quickly learn that it is not made of what they thought it would be made of. 

The void comes courtesy of a lack of definition, the promise is that when we arrive at destination success that it will define us, and of course it can’t and doesn’t. 

In the same way when we believe that destination happiness is a place, a face, an object or a person, we ultimately come up against this empty void. 

The more happiness you think you have attained, the more you want, the more money, fame and success you think you have attained, the more you want. 

The salesman sells you on more, but what you feel is less, it’s an uncomfortable paradox, the more safety you get, the less safety you feel. 

It’s a hint that the deeper aspects of life send us to let us know that the things we play with are not made of definition, we are already defined by life, and try as we might, we can never add to it in any real sense. It’s a great leveller, the vagrant, the destitute, the middle class, the upper class and the filthy rich all cut from the same piece of mortal cloth, now that’s a truth you can take to the bank. 

## From the episode

> If we start defining ourselves by success, we begin to suffer.

> When we finally get to the goalposts of life, we find that the endpoint is made of love and not transient objects.

## Where this fits

Keep the chase, drop the definition. Athletes who tie their worth to results come undone when the results go, or when they retire. The ones who last enjoy the process and who they are. That's the Thrive part of how I coach. More on that in [Thrive](https://www.grantgiles.com.au/pillars/mental-progression/thrive/).

## Keep reading

- [Success and Failure](https://www.grantgiles.com.au/success-and-failure/): success and failure are one face
- [Fragments](https://www.grantgiles.com.au/fragments/): living through outcomes fragments you
- [Flowering](https://www.grantgiles.com.au/flowering/): a hundred years from now, no one will care, and that's freeing