The New Definition of Success: The Strength to Not Do

For most of my life, I measured success by how much I could get done. How fast I could move. How efficiently I could cross one more thing off the list.

Productivity. Efficiency. Performance. Those were the badges of honor I proudly wore.

But lately, I’ve come to see that committing to simplicity, to soothing my own soul, might be the most radical act of success there is.

It’s not about doing more in less time anymore.

It’s about allowing myself to want less, own less, and allowing life to unfold in its own rhythm. It’s about leaving space for serendipity and for the gentle surprises that appear when we finally stop trying to make everything happen.

Relieving the Pressure

We live in a culture of constant pressure. Pressure to start the next thing. To push through. To keep improving, producing, striving.

We call it discipline, but often it’s just fear in disguise. The motivator is the fear of falling behind, of being forgotten, of not doing enough.

Real discipline is something different. It’s the courage to stop. To resist the pull of “one more thing.” To not buckle under the invisible weight of our own expectations.

The strength to not do has become my new definition of success.

A Commitment to Simplicity

Recently, I rearranged my entire calendar. Instead of starting my days at 5 or 6 a.m., I decided that my work would begin at 11.

At first, it felt wonderful in theory — but in practice, it was deeply uncomfortable.

I didn’t know how to fill that time. I felt lost. Guilty. Irresponsible.

The voices in my head called me lazy, unproductive, even undeserving. It was astonishing to realize how deeply those old stories of worth and work were woven into me.

To quiet the guilt, I filled the space again. I meditated. I practiced Qigong. I trained in internal martial arts.

Each ritual was meaningful, but slowly I realized that I had just built a new to-do list. A spiritual one this time.

My mornings were full again, but not free.

The Practice of Allowing

We feel it in work too.

The real practice wasn’t the meditation or the movement. It was the space between them. The allowing.

Letting action arise spontaneously, not from obligation or habit, but from presence. From the creative source within.

There is a kind of sacred intelligence that only emerges when we stop pushing.

When we listen. When we trust that not doing is not the same as being idle.

It’s the moment when creativity begins to move on its own. When life begins to collaborate. When success stops being about control and starts being about harmony.

The Soul of Simplicity

This, to me, is what it means to live and work in alignment now. To follow the seasons instead of schedules. To honor the inward pull of winter, the outward energy of summer. To let nature set the pace rather than marketing calendars or cultural expectations.

Committing to simplicity is not about doing less for the sake of it. It’s about creating room for what is important to me and to the world.

When we relieve the pressure to constantly improve, we make space for something far more intelligent to lead.

For more insight. For deeper creativity. For quieter peace.

And that spaciousness, that freedom to rest and listen, that to me, is the new definition of success.

Whatever arises from that place is always enough.

Written by Christiane Witt, founder of Soul Soothing Circle, a membership space for women who feel the quiet exhaustion of holding it all together. Through the Soul Soothing System of settling the mind, simplifying life, systematizing the business, and scaling income, together with her 2 partners, she helps women reclaim spaciousness, ease, and creative flow in their work and lives.