Success, 3 Ways

How it looks vs How it feels

Second Things First!

Back in early June, I was locked in a padded lightless room for 3 days as I read my entire book to myself. Fortunately, there was a recording device in the room with me!

The outcome is MY AUDIO BOOK, which is available on all the audio formats (borrow-able and listen-able from many local libraries too!).

If you’d like a bedtime story for now, here’s a clip:

And, of course, it is available in physical book form too. Options! :)

First Things Second!

On Success

A few months ago, I learned that the Next Big Idea Book Club (ahem, curated by Adam Grant, Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Cain, and Daniel Pink) featured my newest book in quite impressive company, and I was terribly thrilled.

While it’s completely out of my control how people perceive or categorize me as a writer, I purposefully wrote this latest round from my thinker side rather than my feeler side (not mutually exclusive by any means, but different intentionality). It was affirming to be considered that way, by people whom I consider sharp thinkers.

Along with this fun honor, I got to answer a delightful little 21-question interview—my favorite style to fill out and to read.

Toward the end, I saw a question that stumped me for a couple minutes:

“In five years, successful authors will all be…”

I immediately thought, “Oh, God” with a horse-esque sigh.

All my so-familiar-they’re-boring insecurities rose up and I did the thing where you see how everyone else answered first to make sure you’re on the right track.

The others’ answers sounded so fancy and certain; I felt instantly drained of any fanciness. More like a peasant hobbling into a formal dinner for kings or some such thing. (This is a VERY common feeling for me among other writers!)

To slightly empower myself (as much as an insignificant piece of lint person can feel empowered), I thought, “Well what would I want to hear?” and just wrote for myself:

“….redefining success! There are as many success metrics as there are people in the world and I've found my deepest satisfaction in the type of success that can't be seen or listed in a bio. I hope others too will experience the wonders of true connection with readers and a life enriched by the writing process.”

Was that a good answer? I don’t know; I’m too embarrassed to read it! But it was a true answer from my point of view, which is probably preferable to copying someone else’s with slightly different language.

And, it’s something I’ve been thinking about a LOT since How to Be a Living Thing catapulted into the world of print. Actually, far before that.

I had a meeting with the publisher marketing team last fall, and they asked me what success for this book would mean.

I wanted to give an answer that implied I had any investment in the financial viability of this project for them, but sales stopped being any ‘success’ metric years ago.

So I said, “Connection,” and elaborated on how I hope this book would lead me toward richer connection with fellow humans.

I’ve been reflecting on answer since its release two weeks ago. Given that metric, it’s been WILDLY BEYOND OUT OF THIS WORLD successful.

And, like so many of the best feelings in the human emotional range, it’s invisible! It would be very hard for me to prove to you how connective this book release has been…but I don’t think I need to.

That said, I’d love to share with you a few ways that “connection” has defined and redefined success in various areas of my life, in case it becomes a more useful metric for you too:

Career

I’ve talked your poor ear off by now about my ongoing career transition, which I’m now realizing is just…life.

Like most humans, I can’t get enough of ‘arrival fallacy’—the idea that reaching a certain point (or goal, or milestone) will put me on a smooth-sailing autopilot highway plateau where insecurities slip off the pavement and mixed metaphors work perfectly.

Anyone who exists fully on earth easily recognizes the fallacy part of this idea: You get the job you want and now you have to work, you get the relationship you want and it doesn’t resolve your abandonment fears, you get a haircut and somehow it doesn’t change your life. Well, not permanently anyway.

And what once seemed to me like “a career crisis” was just another season in a cyclical rhythm of growth and decay—inevitable and by all means normal.

I imagine both creativity and career as an eternal ocean float: you catch one wave, then later you catch another, then it’s still for a while, then there’s a water-wall coming right at you, then you bob around in its aftermath for a bit before watching it fall on someone else’s head.

Sometimes the still water is disorienting and eerie; sometimes it’s relaxing and settling. Sometimes the big waves are exhilarating; a lot of times they bring far more anxiety than they’re worth.

In an inevitable but unpredictable sequence of sways and ebbs, what remains is connection to others in the same boat (er, out of the same boat) and connection to why I decided to swim the ocean in the first place.

Here’s what it looked like for my most recent book:

Right before publishing, I had a big energy spike and a desire to reach out to individuals who had unknowingly influenced my writing on this topic specifically (this topic: humanness, alivenesss, animal-ness?).

You know in a video game when Mario jumps up to bonk his head on a gold coin and then you can move really fast for a few moments? That’s what the energy surge was like.

I suddenly had video-game-boldness to reach out to my own version of celebrities: authors, podcast hosts, biologists who studied turtles for decades, etc. I told them how I felt about their work, and asked if I could send them my book with no strings of any length attached, as a thanks—not a plea.

Not all of them wrote back. Most didn’t. And that’s well with my soul!

But my vulnerable little tugs at their inbox (think: puppy yanking on a long hemline) directly led to a couple of my favorite interactions I’ve ever had. EVER!!

They had nothing to do with ‘talking shop’ but more about exchanging ideas and ways to think about mutual obsessions. I got to go on a podcast I love (will share soon!) and engage in a delicious conversation with someone I admire even more now than I did before.

I got to casually chat with one of my very favorite writers about my baby’s name, donkeys, and my favorite saint. HEAVEN!!

I’ve had a book on the NY Times Bestseller list before. I understand and respect what that means to people, but the feeling it gave me was….nothing.

At that point I knew how the plant-based sausage was made, and it didn’t signal that anyone had meaningfully integrating my writing into their own sacred worlds; it just meant people had bought a physical item. And I felt nothing about that.

In contrast, I have felt EVERYTHING about these recent gorgeous conversations I’ve had with new friends.

Additionally, some individual praise has plugged my heart into a power outlet to pulse with neon light ever since:

I volunteer-dog-walk for elderly pet owners, including a fabulous elegant majestic British woman with the highest level of ruthlessly discerning taste in all things art, literature, and silk scarves. When she told me, “I’ve never read anyone who writes like you,” I felt. I felt so much.

And when my dear esthetician surprised me at my book release event, and later told me that I could have another life as a stand-up comedian because I have great timing when I speak…I felt felt felt. Particularly for my inner child who desperately wanted to be a comedian, then shut down that precious funny spirit for years as she preferred to be invisible.

And the podcast host, who told me, “This book is JOY!” Which I felt because I put so much joy into it!

BLISSED OUT to get this privilege of a lifetime to write this book!

I have a very good and very insightful friend who was a musical theatre actress on Broadway for two years. Went to the Tony’s, got all the accolades, amassed the social media following, etc etc.

Ever since, she’s taken many more roles off- and off-off-off Broadway, and she brings so much artistry to these roles that now most fans recognize her for those roles rather than the iconic glitzy Broadway era.

I’d never known if that transition was intentional or not, so I asked. Being very nosy, I further asked if she carried any grief about closing that glitzy chapter, or if any deferred dreams of fame followed her around.

She told me a story I’d never heard, about how after Broadway she was continually offered the Big Broadway Roles and could have easily taken them.

But she intuited that a life of “performing” rather than “creating art” would be miserable, and none of the awards or praise would be able to penetrate a soul that was no longer porous to true connection.

I remember how, on my first book tour, which was a totally intoxicating binge on impossible-to-believe-or-process events around the country and in Australia, I’d find myself back at my hotel room, painfully lonely, feeling the contrast so starkly.

Meeting so many people without the time or opportunity to truly connect with them presented a wild anthropological study in what fulfillment looks like.

A “moment of success” that I barely remember. Successful hair day though!

It was a very COOL experience, but it’s not one during which I got to feel much. And, to be hesitantly honest, it didn’t make me happy.

Or at least not nearly as happy as it does when one of you writes a comment here on my newsletter that busts open a window in my brain and blows me right out of it. That’s the good stuff. :)

I thought about that as my friend talked about the excitement of a Broadway stage door vs. the once-in-a-lifetime privilege of originating and building a complex character from scratch to explore every evening on stage to an audience who had come in with no expectations but to witness and connect with art in all its strangeness and challenges.

In other jobs, connection has always been the constant keeping me happily bobbing afloat in a sea of random waves.

I worked a few office jobs I barely cared about, but I loved getting to know people I worked with. I can’t imagine not having those friends in my life now—the ones I trauma-bonded with or simply spent the majority of my days alongside.

I point to my friend Jess as the very best example of what wonderful friendship can come out of a job that frequently made you cry

I worked a LOT of retail and food service jobs I also barely cared about, but it’s too horrifying to even entertain the idea of a life without the customers I adored who became closest confidantes.

And even the work I did in solitude—ironing church altar cloths, baking scones in a restaurant kitchen during morning’s earliest hours, and writing brochure copy in the late evenings when I could finally scavenge around my brain for bits of focus—connected me to something hidden within me…much like the writing I do here, in a different setting.

I felt as successful enjoying my imagination and listening to music as I baked those scones during relentless Chicago winter mornings as I did on a book tour. Connection arrives in so many forms.

It was also my job to do the chalkboards, and it felt like superstar success that people on the sidewalk would see it! :)

Conversation

I didn’t realize until I re-read my book out loud for the audio version that I discovered some moments of, hm, preachiness within it that I wasn’t heretofore conscious of.

I have self-grace for those moments; it’s challenging to expound any topic you hold very dear without a flip-flopping into preacher territory. (Not to mention, preachers take the pulpit for good reasons sometimes!)

I remember the passion and even “holy anger” that snaked through my mind as I was writing, and it makes sense that those serpents rattled and hissed.

Something I find liberating about book-writing as opposed to internet-posting is that I can’t rewrite, edit, or provide extra context after a book is out there. It’s just out there!

But I’m curious how to move forward out of book pages into real-life interactions when it comes to these topics that are way easier to preach on than converse on. Because then I have to LISTEN. :)

At least in my own internet, every online participant is very passionate about something, and is compelled to share about that something for the benefit of others.

That can be really useful, and has obviously transformed into massive, meaningful, long-overdue movements.

It can also be alienating, and have an opposite effect as people naturally shut down in the face of confrontation (even via meme!).

[All I can think about is how grateful I am that I didn’t have the internet in a significant way when I was a teenager, or I’d be INTOLERABLY INSUFFERABLE. One can only put so many “Free Tibet” stickers on telephone poles, whereas online posting is endless.]

I’ve been wondering for years what success looks like when it comes to idea-sharing between people who disagree, after listening to this podcast episode 500 times during 2020:

It reframed my metric of success for social progress from “getting people on my side” to “coming to a new solution together.”

Since writing How to Be a Living Thing, I’ve learned way more than I probably ever wanted to know about how humans use animals (and even other humans!) as products, and it’s no secret that it really grinds my gears!

My latest “bumper sticker” of choice

AND, I am fully aware that if I got started on all my facts and feelings about this, everyone would suddenly remember they had a dentist appointment and get out of the room as quickly as possible.

I know this because that’s how I react when I feel like I’m being yelled at for not grasping the bottom layer of an issue I’ve never even thought about superficially. I take my belongings and shuffle-ball-change right on out of the conversation (or Instagram Reel).

So what does success look like when it comes to debates, disagreements, educating each other, and educating our own selves without becoming evangelists who bring a microphone to the airport to harass people into changing their entire lifestyles so you can get brownie points with the Lord or your political party?

I’ve had a lot of social and political and spiritual issues latch on to my passion throughout the years and really run with it, but I can’t remember any time when I’ve actually convinced anyone of “my side,” so I don’t know how that feels in terms of personal success.

However, I actually imagine it might feel a teeny bit icky if we arrived to my side with anything but lots of grace (from their part) and lots of listening (from mine).

When I’ve felt “successful” in any conversation exploring differing viewpoints, it doesn’t feel like dominance, but nourishment and novelty. We’re figuring out something together, disarmed, and ultimately enlivened.

In those interactions, I’ve been able to welcome a loved one into considering an idea and asking themselves how they think about that, and possibly make different choices moving forward.

It has nothing to do with fire-hose-blasting a person with information to frighten or shame them into behavioral change (that is, by the way, exactly what I mean when I say that humans treat each other as products!).

As a sagacious friend pointed out, it’s the difference of sharing messages of spiritual thought to illuminate, expand, enrich, and add mystery to a person’s life vs terrifying a person into being “saved” through dread and humiliation.

I feel successful when I’m so connected in conversation that I’m a vessel for discussion, rather than a person-version of a baseball hat that clunks innocent bystanders over the head with all my hot spicy takes.

But, you’re right: IT’S REALLY HARD TO DO THAT.

Because I get all agitated and anxious and upset when I’m in the position where a friend or rando brings up a hot potato of my passion and doesn’t know as much as I do and doesn’t seem to care as much as I do, and then I turn into a threat rather than a conversation companion.

Instead of fueling the bonfire of my passion, the exchange burns us both, and now we’re injured and hurting.

This is when I realize that I have my own work to do. Otherwise I say and do things that are so far from my highest self that we barely recognize each other at such a distance.

As my sagacious friend instructed me, I have homework to do: My task is to wonder how I can continue to process through, heal from, and work on knowing all this information that I can’t unsee, in order to resist the HOW COULD YOUs and HOW COULD YOU NOTs when I talk to someone who’s ignorant about it.

Success is NOT working through my emotions in real-time with an unsuspecting human dart board for my rage.

The stage for success in discourse is set only I’ve after let my heart fully break, then prioritizing all the aching broken parts that need processing.

Then, I can respond—rather than react—when these topics sneak their way into relationships as they so often do.

I realized a while back that I no longer had much in the way of actual ideology when it came to my political passions; they had become a series of reactions. And thus, all my heart-to-hearts about such things were just reactions-to-reactions. Unsuccessful on every level.

I am still in the beginning stages of understanding how to do all this, as I’m sure I will be all my life. But a helpful step has been to forget “being on the right side” as a metric of success, and instead to keep connected—to my closest values and to the humanity of the person in front of me.

With that in mind, I’m able to find some joy in all this information overload.

Even though learning about animals inevitably means learning about the failures of humans, animals (and humans!!) remain so wondrous to behold. Miracles abound in the contemplation of any living thing, and I never want to lose my connection to that—what began my study in the first place.

WHAT I HATE ABOUT PEOPLE WHO DON’T GET IT is a very noticeable difference in the body from WHAT I LOVE THAT MAKES ME LIGHT UP ABOUT THIS TOPIC. And what lights me up looks a lot like this:

Intimate Relationships/Family

Listen: Getting ready to keep a baby alive is pretty freaky.

I don’t think I’ve even ever held a newborn—at least not a memorable one—so the amount of STUFF TO LEARN is endless and intimidating. Memorizing a few tips is less confidence-building than it is generative of a million more follow-up questions and clarifications.

I found myself entertaining a completely new personality for myself: a Type-A, rigid, robotic textbook of a person who had absorbed all the knowledge out there in terms of swaddles and bottles.

Then I remembered that I am a Type-W person who has no head for numbers or straight-up facts.

I also remembered that I was welcoming a new human family member to my life, and not a house plant.

This wasn’t a science project or a recipe; this was a relationship.

And I trust the wisdom of all living things to teach me how to treat them best in relationship.

I doubt I’ll feel most “successful as a parent” when I rattle off pros and cons of various formulas, but rather when I become the safest place for this little being because of how well I know them.

The first piece of art I got for the nursery because Dumbo’s mom is my parenting idol, even though hearing this song makes me cry for HOURS

A portrait of me and Mari Jr.

I had a parallel twist of thought when I began considering how Mr. Mari and I would parent equally in a successful 50/50 system that defied norms and even soared above the utopian standards set in marriage-after-kids books.

I liked learning about this emerging model of partnership, but, again, it seemed to necessitate that I become a completely different person in order to implement successfully.

Ask me in a couple years how I feel about all of this, but many of the books presented problems that don’t actually seem that bothersome to me? In other words, they didn’t register to me as problems.

Yes, probably because I’m not a parent yet, ha!!

But also probably because I have a different perspective on what equality success looks like to me in a romantic relationship.

I can EASILY see how tempting it would be to brag about my husband who does the chores and cooking and dresses our child like a bohemian French sailor every morning…but, given some very practical restraints, I don’t see that happening. (We don’t even own a baby beret, ugh!)

We ALL have different perspectives on what various standards of success look like in and out of family or romantic relationship, and deep connection with each other isn’t something you can easily show others or brag about or even articulate well. At least, it isn’t for me!

Out of a relationship, it’s not easy to demonstrate how connected you are to others either.

I remember years of receiving holiday cards with a printed photo on the front—maybe framed in illustrations of holly or snowflakes—depicting a sunbathed autumnal scene with a laughing couple swinging their child between them. Bonus points for a matching clothing motif.

“SUCCESS!!!!!!!!!” it signaled to me.

I pined for such a photo shoot. I genuinely suspected that I might never feel sad again if I had someone in my life who wanted to match flannel with me. I could not see myself as a fully legitimate adult without this genre of holiday card.

Meanwhile, I was fully connected in a broader, non-hierarchal collection of various relationships. (And I bet I could get some of them to match with me!!!)

Years later, and in the theoretical position to do such a photo shoot of my own (that is, if my husband would even consider a universe in which he’d engage in such an activity), I don’t get any of my self-worth juice from being married—a surprise to me!

I get other things that are really nice when you commit to considering another person’s needs as much as your own, but marriage doesn’t make me feel better about myself, like I thought it might.

What makes me feel so good about myself is all the stuff that happened before marriage: stuffing my life chock-full of adventures and joys, deciding to embark on a creative voyage that allowed me to shimmy in the ongoing dance of self-expression, and discovering all that I had to offer in any type of close companionship.

I’m so proud of all that. And marriage, and now having a little family, fits in this existence more like a natural continuation of adventure and creativity rather than a separate marker of adult-self-legitimacy and lovability. I’ve had many life experiences, and this is another one. How lucky can I get?

Similar to career, I felt the same level of happiness when I was single and in a peaceful rhythm of dinners with friend groups and solo summer evenings on my rooftop as I do with a growing family.

The structure is different but the metric of success is the same: Connection in relationship, to self and to others.

And that is what I have to say about that.

The nice thing about using “connection” as a success metric is that nobody else can give you that. It’s all you, baby! We all have so much more agency than we think in what creates a “successful” life, though it’s too easy to believe it comes from awards and holiday card recipients.

You are the only one who will feel that type of success, and you’re the only one who can define it, and you’re the only one who makes it happen. The NY Times Bestseller list WISHES!! :)