A recent LinkedIn post by Dr. Manoj Krishna, founder of the Human Wisdom Project, asking the question, “What does success mean to you—is it wealth, fame or something else?” got me thinking.

Glenda Green, artist, minister and author of Love Without End: Jesus Speaks, describes how people tend to confuse the fulfillment of purpose with success. Purpose is what you do for others, while success is what you do for yourself. Success always breeds hunger—maybe you have made your first million, but it does not feel as good as you expected it to be, so now you are busy trying to get the next million. In contrast, says Glenda Green, purpose is eternally satisfying, even if it is not something for which you would win a trophy.

Purpose can be so many different things – it can be as simple as making a point of clearing trash from a local park every day, making that environment more pleasant for everyone that goes there. Or, for example, it could be grassroots political organizing, or creating art or making music for your community to enjoy.

I’m an ex-BBC journalist, two-time breast cancer survivor and Monty Python aficionado who dealt with the double whammy of discovering my husband’s infidelity and then getting breast cancer for the second time. In my case, I feel a strong sense of purpose writing and speaking about using adversity as a catalyst for positive change. One of my favorite tools to help achieve this is the power of humor. I use comedy to shine a light on somewhat dark subjects with the aim of showing people how to overcome physical and emotional suffering. Here’s what I would say is the difference between success and purpose for me personally:

Purpose: Writing about what I’m driven to write, whether or not a lot of people read it or I make money from it, and the same goes for my speaking work. It comes from the heart with the ultimate aim of benefiting others as well as me.

Success: Becoming well-known in my field and earning a lot of money from it. The quality of what I produce is less important than the amount of people it reaches and the income it generates. It comes from the head with the aim of benefiting me.

I never planned to write the two books I have authored. In some ways, they wrote themselves. Shortly after I discovered my husband’s infidelity, I was at a seminar on Kindle publishing. One of the exercises was to write an outline for a book, and the result was Adulterer’s Wife: How to Thrive Whether You Stay or Not, published in 2016. Its mantra: After infidelity, the best revenge is to get past the need for it. This comedy self-help book became an international bestseller on Amazon. A friend of mine who worked in marketing told me that I needed something to follow Adulterer’s Wife.

“How about a CD-set of advice for wives of philanderers?” he asked, eliciting my groans of disapproval. “Or another book?” he suggested.

I had written Adulterer’s Wife after discovering my husband’s infidelity to describe ways to get past the emotional tsunami and become a more complete, creative and joyful person—no partner required. I believed I had reached that point. I had done numerous articles and interviews about coping with infidelity, but did not feel I had another book in me.
Then I got my second diagnosis of breast cancer, and writing poured out of me like Delhi diarrhea. Thus, My Wild Ride: How to Thrive After Breast Cancer and Infidelity was born. I kept notebooks in my car, in my handbag and by my bed to put down all the absurd aspects of cancer treatment I encountered and various things I wanted to write about. I would be swimming in the local pool and numerous ideas would come to me. Middle-aged and obviously approaching dementia (or maybe it was chemo fog), sometimes these ideas would have gone clean out of my head by the time I got out of the pool, so I wished that I could have swum with a notebook and pencil handy. Who knows what supreme pearls of wisdom I have failed to impart in this book because I lost them in the pool? I discussed my cancer with all kinds of people—friends, relatives, healthcare providers and complete strangers. They would frequently share stories with me, some concerning their own illness, some about people they knew. Many of these tales are included in My Wild Ride.

As a professional writer, I’m exceedingly grateful to be in the position to be able to choose what I write about, rather than being told by others what subjects to cover.

Worldly success will never be as satisfying as purpose. That’s why, as Atlantic Magazine reported in the August 18, 2016 article, “The Dark Side of Going for the Gold,” Olympic medalists often suffer post-Olympic depression, and celebrities who have hit the big time frequently abuse drugs and alcohol. You’ve reached the top of the mountain, but the satisfaction you feel from doing that doesn’t last and it doesn’t feed your soul. Only fulfilling a sense of purpose will do that and give you a great reason to get up every morning.