From Proving Your Worth to Creating Your Value
Redefining Success Across Cultures
For months after moving abroad, I found myself stuck in conversations about my past. “I used to plan weddings,” I’d explain. “I used to work for a digital coaching company.” The words felt safe and familiar. They are achievements I could point to with confidence. However, something felt hollow about constantly looking back to define my worth.
Then came a pivotal moment when I learned about “portfolio careers” through a women’s network, giving me the language to describe my own path. I wasn’t unemployed or lost; I was creating something entirely new. The relief was instant, yet it also exposed an uncomfortable truth: I had been wasting so much energy trying to prove my worth, instead of acknowledging the value I was actively generating.
This month, I am examining how women abroad transition from proving their worth to establishing their value. They go beyond traditional ways of measuring success and focus on genuine contributions and community impact. Living in different cultures prompts us to reflect on what success truly means and whose approval we are seeking.
The Hidden Weight of External Validation
The urge to prove ourselves doesn’t fade after crossing borders; in fact, it often grows stronger. We bring our home expectations while adapting to new cultural standards of success. This leads to tiring performances where we continuously justify our decisions to audiences, real or imagined.
Vika H. Oliveira, whose story we’re featuring this month, describes this perfectly through her Bulgarian lens: “As a Bulgarian, I tend to believe that we need to prove our worth.”
But her journey reveals something fascinating about cultural adaptation. What began as a need to prove herself in Singapore grew into something more powerful: the realisation that she could create what was missing. “I would love to see a physical spot where people can go and feel extremely welcomed and feel that everyone that goes there shares the same values of respect, uplifting, and supporting one another,” she envisions. This isn’t just about business but about creating value through authentic contribution.
The Shift from Performance to Purpose
The shift from demonstrating worth to generating value doesn’t usually occur instantly. It is often prompted by times when conventional success indicators seem insufficient or inauthentic within our evolving cultural landscape.
For some, it’s the realisation that career titles don’t translate across borders. For others, it’s understanding that financial independence isn’t the sole indicator of contribution. Sometimes, it’s just about recognising that the work you’re doing- such as building connections, fostering community, and supporting others’ transitions- holds significant value, even if it doesn’t align with traditional success metrics.
From conversations with women living abroad, I’ve observed that this shift often means we must distinguish our sense of achievement from others’ recognition or understanding. International living enhances our cultural intelligence, showing us that different environments value various contributions, and that our success remains valid and significant even if not universally understood.
The Questions That Reveal Everything
This month, we will examine how women experience this transformation in various cultural settings. But first, let’s consider some reflections that may be uncomfortable.
What would you be afraid to admit about how you currently measure your own success? Perhaps it’s still tied to salary figures, job titles, or the ability to purchase things independently. Maybe it’s about meeting family expectations or maintaining a certain image on social media.
When you imagine telling someone “this is what I do now,” what makes you hesitate or feel defensive? Is it the unconventional nature of your path? The fact that it doesn’t fit into specific categories? The vulnerability of building something entirely your own?
What would you do differently if you knew your family and friends would understand and support any definition of success you chose? This question often reveals the gap between what we actually want to create and what we believe we should want.
These are not comfortable questions, but they are the important ones that help us discover ourselves.
Beyond Individual Achievement
One of the most significant shifts I’ve observed is how women abroad often redefine success to encompass not only personal achievement but also community impact. When you’re building life in a new place, traditional metrics of individual success (climbing corporate ladders, accumulating possessions, meeting societal milestones) often feel incomplete.
Instead, success is now also about the connections you foster among others, the support you offer in their transitions, the community spaces you help establish or sustain, and the cultural bridges you build through genuine relationships.
This isn’t about giving up on ambition but rather broadening our understanding of what ambition entails when you’re navigating different cultures and creating something meaningful.
In the coming weeks, I will explore how this transformation takes place, share actionable frameworks for managing the transition, and examine what genuine success entails when your focus is on creating value instead of merely demonstrating worth.
How do you currently define success? What aspects of that definition feel aligned with who you’re becoming, and what parts feel like performance for an audience that might not even be watching anymore?
The conversation starts here, but I believe it will extend far beyond October. Once you start questioning whose definition of success you’re using, it becomes much harder to go back to measuring yourself by someone else’s standards.
Open Threads
I’d love to hear your experiences with redefining success. Whether you’re still figuring it out, have found approaches that work, or are somewhere in between, your perspective adds to our understanding of how women navigate these shifts across different cultures.
Share as much or as little as you feel comfortable in the comments below. Sometimes the most helpful thing is knowing we’re not alone in questioning these definitions and that the messy, imperfect process of redefining success is actually quite universal.