Friday, February 14, 2025

Define Your Role to Define Your Success

The great thing about defining roles is that you can do it for smaller daily tasks, medium-sized weekly tasks, or larger monthly, yearly, or even life-long tasks. And this means that you can find fulfillment in nearly everything, every day

By André van Heerden, Communications Director

Super Bowl LIX was played a month ago, and the Philadelphia Eagles were crowned the champs. I was wondering, who exactly gets counted as being on the Philadelphia Eagles team, and who receives a gaudy Super Bowl ring?

The NFL contributes $5,000 to $7,000 per ring for up to 150 rings. Teams can pay for extra rings, and some have been given to janitors and cheerleaders and others to front-office staff.

If you are a water boy or girl for the Eagles, would you feel like you’re part of the team and deserve the ring?

I think a great deal of how you feel about an award depends on how you define your role. If you took your job as water boy or girl seriously and were always right there to help the players, I bet getting a ring would feel really satisfying and well-deserved.

Even though handing out water isn’t as glamourous as Jalen Hurts, the Eagles’ quarterback, throwing a bomb for a touchdown, it’s still a defined role that was needed and completed and helped the team.

Inspirational deaf and blind author and educator Helen Keller wrote, “I cannot do everything, but I can do something. I must not fail to do the something that I can do.”

I was recently helping pack food hampers for a local church. Dozens of volunteers showed up so there were more than enough people to do the sorting and packing.

I saw a need to take away the empty cardboard boxes that the various food items came in. And then a further need to break them down for recycling.

Despite not packing the actual food hampers, I still felt like I contributed to the effort when I saw three big stacks of flattened cardboard at the end of the night.

Rapper, actor, and two-time Grammy Award winner LeCrae said, “Better to have a small role in God’s story than to cast yourself as the lead in your own fiction.”

Author and artist Elbert Hubbard wrote that we should “work to become, not to acquire.”

I find Hubbard’s insight particularly interesting because it not only speaks to how to succeed, but how to be happy.

If you define success by what you acquire or what others think of you, or even on big goals, you’re basing it on something that’s out of your control and fleeting. But if you carefully define why you’re doing something, or why you do what you do, that sort of success can’t be taken away.

Despite all of her fame, fortune, and awards, Angelina Jolie said, “I see myself as mom first. I’m so lucky to have that role in life. The world can like me, hate me, or fall apart around me and at least I wake up with my kids and I’m happy.”

Within my work, I find I feel successful when I complete something—big or small—that’s been clearly defined. When I’m working on a project and yet and I’m searching for a role, or I’m unsure if I’m doing what I should be, or I feel like I’m just watching others get something done, I never feel satisfied—even if the project is a success.

Tellingly, Hurts was quoted after winning the Super Bowl, “I had a purpose before anyone had an opinion. That thing is still true. And my purpose is to be who God called me to be.”

Hurts winning the big game was clearly a goal of his, but the outcome of that game wasn’t going to define who he is or his happiness.

Define Your Role to Define Your Success

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