Meet the new Editor-in-Chief of SUCCESS

Greetings ambitious humans!

I’ve always thought writing down my goals and plans would better equip me for success. Experience has suggested otherwise. I stopped making five-year plans about five years ago. I can’t seem to pin them down, or I lose them on Google Drive or a tab somewhere. In one unfortunate incident, I left a highly articulated life plan, scribbled on a cocktail napkin, at the Atlanta airport. If experience is a teacher, I think I’m more of an accidental tourist in the success department. The conclusion I’ve reached is that success is nonlinear.

Several versions of success have emerged thus far in my nonlinear journey. Very few were planned. It goes something like this: Humanities graduate. Magazine editor (what else are you going to do with a humanities degree, right?) Author. Entrepreneurial storyteller. Mountain dweller. Beach dweller. Motorcycle rider. I’ve left jobs gracefully. I’ve left jobs in a flame of glory, torching every available bridge—which was not a good success practice (or enlightenment practice, for that matter).

Seeking and defining my own success has proven an arduous process. I’ve failed a lot. But I’ve also done some pretty cool stuff. I’ve had the good fortune to spend my career around creative people, entrepreneurs, and assorted humans willing to try things that might not work. Some of them succeeded wildly. Some blew it. Most did a little of both. And all of them rearranged my definition of success.

And now, somewhat improbably, I’m the editor-in-chief of SUCCESS. None of this was on the five-year plan. Which makes this new opportunity something pretty exciting.

SUCCESS has spent nearly 130 years studying a subject we remain reliably unable to agree on. We’ve built entire industries around telling people how to achieve success, who is successful, and what success looks like—all while continuing to change our minds about what success is.

I love this about us. Humans are terrible at remaining stagnant. We get ideas and we get inspired. We meet people that change our perspective. We fail. We get bored. Some things work and, strangely, we decide we don’t want them anymore. We fall in love with ideas and places and people we couldn’t possibly have put on the five-year plan.

Maybe we underestimate how much of our success happens this way. Quite by accident.

I don’t want to tell you what success is. I’m not convinced anyone can. I want us to go looking for it—in entrepreneurs and artists, athletes and inventors, people screwing up, and most importantly, in ourselves. When you think about it, it’s truly amazing what humans are capable of becoming, especially when it wasn’t on the plan.

–Amy Cosper

amy.cosper@success.com