April
First place.
You find participation medals an insult, and competing with others is your way of showing the world that you are number one. Success for you is something that needs to be measured, so you always keep score even in areas of your life that are difficult to put numbers on. You plan regular dates, never forget to send a birthday card, and read at least one book a month. And you are your biggest enemy and biggest critic. While your competitive edge can be off-putting, and give off an elitist air at times, the truth is that the haters in your space just wish they had enough confidence to put themselves out there and ask for things the way you do.
May
Thunder.
You don’t just want to win an argument, you want to leave it with as many votes as possible. It is not enough to have the right ideas or the best ideas, your ideas should please as many people as possible. You don’t stop playing politics. You get along with your boss’s boss, you’re your favorite kid, and you’re the one the old folks will never say anything bad about. And all happy people plan with one motive: He defines success as being remembered fondly by as many people as possible.
June
Staying “on”.
He is determined to prove that he can do it all. Your success is your full-time job, your side hustle, your book club, your night class, your workout routine, your skin care routine, your volunteer work, and your relationships. You go from one thing to another without needing to appear in the air. Your words are “I’ll sleep when I’m dead”. You worry that there isn’t enough time in the world to reach your full potential, so you spend the time you have doing as much as you can.
July
Teaching others to win.
You live to see the people you support succeed. Your direct reports, your managers, the sports teams you coach all owe you many of their achievements. You find joy in helping others grow and passing on the things you’ve learned over the years to people who will use them. He pushes others to push their limits and strives to be a loyal but stubborn leader. You feel most successful when others don’t want to let you down.
August
Influence.
You want to be the arbiter of taste. Someone you come to with questions and look to for answers. You want to be an expert, a consultant, a trendsetter. He wants to be the model others aspire to be. Your idea of success is about being a brand and selling the absolute shit out of it. He works hard, but he likes to live comfortably. So if you can turn that lifestyle into your career, you’re killing two birds with one stone.
September
To correct others.
You like to know when other people are wrong, and the only thing you like most is telling it to someone’s face. A college professor once taught you how to structure essays by presenting evidence that X appears to be Y, but is actually Z, and you’ve used that model throughout your life ever since. You are too good to let it turn into a holier-than-thou mind. Your idea of success is to wake up as much as possible, but you know it takes constant work. You are a cultural critic at heart and have no respect for delving into the deep, dark corners of one’s shared experience in order to highlight that which is less than desirable.
October
It’s splurging.
You hate the phrase “work hard, play hard” because you find it’s used a lot by people trying to trick you into working long hours without a raise, but that’s how you live your life. The money you earn is the money you spend, and boy do you know how to spend it well. Holidays. Dinners. Everything about you is a signature, from your jewelry to your shoes to your posture. Success is making your dreams come true and you know exactly how much work it took to get there.
November
It remains inaccessible.
You are never satisfied. Even though your closest friends look at you in amazement at everything you have achieved, you always look down on yourself. Always compare what you know now with experts who have been doing it their whole life. He wants to push the boundaries of what people can do. You want to go beyond what is normal, average, done before, that’s why you will always grow, develop, learn. You would like to be a constant work in progress because you will be instantly bored and restless if you ever know something completely.
December
Authorization.
You want a gold star. You want to be approved by an authority, an expert, someone you see as a success in themselves. You are not influenced by fame or popularity. What others think is more important than the small fraction of people you are sure know what they are doing and talking about. And he wants to be accepted by them. They were praised by them. He agreed and was accepted into their circle. You want to tap into the very essence of diversity. Because for you, success works your way from the outsider to the insider.
January
Promotion.
You don’t work for free, and you make that very clear to the world around you. Success does not spend a lot of time in the office. Success is not martyrdom, proving to everyone how hard you can work. It’s not about being a boss and getting to tell other people what to do. You want to work smarter, and you want to put effort wherever the benefit is greatest. So you want a promotion. You have dreams to fulfill that need money to make them come true, and you are not afraid to ask for them.
February
Supporting your family.
Success for you, is about giving back. You want to make sure that the people you are close to are healthy and happy and taken care of. You want to build your own family, and support your parents, siblings, nieces, and nephews in any way you can. Success means that no one in your inner circle is worried about whether they can pay their bills at night. And you are proud that your hard work can give them that peace of mind.
March
To see the world.
You want to feel like you’ve seen more of what the world has to offer. You wouldn’t be content to stay in your hometown, or in the same company, or in the same role, forever. You want to put your dreams into action and expand your experience to include as many different points of view as possible. You want to be accepted by different cultures and types of people. Because success for you is about feeling like you belong to something much bigger than yourself.