[Milestones & Transitions] Measuring What Matters: Living an Intentional Life of Success & Fulfilment
- Young Women's Leadership Connection
- 12m
- 6 min read
Redefining Success on Your Own Terms
What does it truly mean to live a successful and fulfilling life? This was the central question explored at our recent event, "Measuring What Matters: Living an Intentional Life of Success & Fulfilment," where 35 participants gathered to hear from two2 inspiring senior women leaders, Shiao-yin Kuik (Founder of Common Ground Civic Centre & Consultancy) and Karina Cady (CEO of Nandina REM), who shared their journeys of intentional living.
Drawing inspiration from Clayton M. Christensen's seminal work "How Will You Measure Your Life?", the session invited participants to challenge conventional notions of success and encouraged them to intentionally invest their most finite resources (such as time, energy, and talent) toward what genuinely matters to them.
Finding Your Own Path
The path to discovering what we truly want and what success means to us can often be challenging with many of us struggling with this very question. However, Shiao-yin offered a practical starting point: if you don't know what you want, begin by focusing on what you don't want. This simple reframing can be the first step toward clarity.
Shiao-yin, a cultural change strategist and one of our featured speakers, shared her personal journey of not fitting traditional moulds. This discomfort became a catalyst for her to ask asking herself fundamental questions like “What do I really want to do?” and “Who am I?”.
Her insight resonated deeply: "It's hard to discover who you are if you don't make hard decisions." The path to self-discovery requires us to learn to make better choices that align with our authentic selves.
The Courage to Choose
One of the morning's most thought-provoking themes centred on ownership and agency. Karina shared a personal story about how achievements may seem grandiose to others but feel empty to ourselves. She emphasised that just because you're in a purposeful organisation or role, it doesn't mean you're doing something purposeful for yourself.
A powerful insight shared during the discussion was the distinction between joy and happiness. True joy demands vulnerability; it doesn't mean avoiding hardship, but rather making choices that resonate with your authentic self. Shiao-yin reflected on the moment of clarity that comes from finding your path, stating that while it may sound cliché, recognition happens both in the knowing and more importantly, in the act of choosing itself.
Balancing Short-Term and Long-Term Goals: Taking Ownership
One question many participants posed was “How do we navigate immediate pressures while staying true to our long-term vision”? The answer lies in being intentional about how you choose your life. If you want results, you must act, recognising that some choices may prove to be imperfect.
A recurring theme throughout the morning was the critical importance of looking inward rather than outward. Too often, people outsource their major life decisions to others, succumbing to societal pressures, family expectations, or conventional wisdom about what success should look like. Allowing others to chart their course, whether consciously or unconsciously, can lead to misalignment. When things inevitably go wrong, individuals may deflect responsibility and blame on external circumstances or other people.
The wisdom shared was clear: you have to make sense of what matters to you on the inside. Do not outsource your choices to the outside. If you're looking externally for help, it often means you still do not know what you truly want, and the discovery work can only be done by yourself.
The key is moving past fear and shame by taking full ownership: Acknowledge that you made that decision and allowed it to happen. When you own your choices, both the successes and the missteps, you reclaim your agency. Take that first step toward your goals; this approach transforms paralysis into progress.
By learning to make better choices aligned with our authentic selves, we often surprise ourselves with our own potential. As Shiao-yin noted, certainty is a fantasy. What you should seek for is clarity, understanding what works and what doesn’t work for you. And that clarity can only come from within.
Practical Frameworks for Intentional Living
Karina and Shiao-yin offered several actionable strategies for navigating life with intention:
Befriend Your Internal Board Members: Rather than fighting the different voices in your head, validate where they come from. Understand their concerns, befriend these voices, and get permission from yourself to make your own choices. Engage with them as you would with stakeholders, rather than battling against them. Only by addressing these internal voices can you move forward in unison.
Redefine Ambition: Consider having a destination instead of traditional notions of ambition. Your concept of ambition can evolve as you do.
Think and Execute: These two aspects reinforce each other. Set aside time to reflect, not to criticise yourself, but to discover more about yourself, your strengths, and what you truly want to pursue.
Define Financial Stability for Yourself: Establish a financial runway, but prepare for plans to change. You have to decide for yourself what financial stability means to you. This is a crucial distinction; financial stability doesn't necessarily mean having a lot of money. In fact, someone with substantial wealth can still be financially unstable if they do not manage their expenses or live beyond their means. Conversely, financial stability can be achieved at various income levels. It's about understanding your needs, managing your resources wisely, and living within your means. Often, we discover that we don't need nearly as much as we think to be happy. By defining your own baseline for financial stability rather than chasing ever-moving goalposts set by society or comparison with others, you create the freedom to make choices aligned with your values, not just your bank balance.
Defining Success on Your Own Terms
In conclusion, "Comparison is the thief of joy." It's hard to find joy when you're constantly looking outside yourself and trying to outsource happiness.
The fundamental question to ask yourself is “Where am I going, and who do I want to be?”
The session reinforced a liberating truth - there is no objective definition of success. Success is deeply personal and subjective. What fulfilment looks like for you may be entirely different from what its meaning is for someone else, and that's exactly how it should be. The work is to look inward and engage in honest inner dialogue to discover what success truly means to you.
While each person's definition will be unique, the event revealed some universal principles for living intentionally:
Be direct with kindness and respect to ourselves: The way we speak to and treat ourselves matters.
Build systems that create options and opportunities for the future: Give yourself room to grow and pivot.
Take full ownership of your decisions: Claim your choices and their consequences without blame or deflection.
Have the courage to choose, and keep making it right: Success isn't about making perfect decisions. It's about making a choice, then course- correcting and finding ways to make it work.
The morning concluded with a powerful reminder: Make a choice and make it right. We have the agency to shape our lives through intentional decision-making - We just need the courage to use it.
“A good reflective event where I search deeply on what success means to me. The panelists were authentic and shared relatable experiences on how to navigate choices in life.”
- Kelly Chen, Facilitator & Attendee
Join Us on the Journey
This event marks the first instalment of the Milestones & Transitions (M&T) series organised by the Member Recruitment Subcommittee. The M&T series explores pivotal moments in women's personal and professional lives, examining both our inner journeys and our relationships with others.
"Measuring What Matters" kicked off this exploration by focusing on the personal and individual dimension of success and fulfilment. The series will continue to explore the intersections of personal versus professional life, and self versus relationships with others, offering a comprehensive framework for navigating life's significant transitions.
If these insights resonate with you and you're seeking a community of like-minded individuals committed to growth, do join us at the upcoming sessions in this series. Not a YWLC member yet? We'd love to welcome you into our community. Find out more here: https://www.ywlc.org.sg/become-a-member.
