Reclaim Your Definition of Success with Alyssa Denney
Recap of the Lunch & Learn hosted June, 16, 2026
In this Lunch and Learn, Alyssa Denney, VP, Business Development at Great Northern Corporation, presents a framework for rethinking how to define success in the workplace and in your personal life. She encourages listeners to understand that the high-achievement culture we experience today shapes how we view success, and then asks them to reframe that definition of success as their lives evolve.
She first reviews the “Arrival Fallacy” and how it leads to feeling unhappy after achieving a milestone. The fallacy describes striving for something, achieving it, and then feeling unhappy after the milestone is met. Our high-achievement culture forces people into a cycle of striving, achieving, and then feeling flat, leaving them no time for rest and reflection on what was achieved.
The post-pandemic shift is moving people away from the traditional metrics of career success to a more human-centered focus. Professionals are becoming more focused on autonomy, flexibility, and well-being rather than on financial compensation and personal sacrifice to achieve corporate prestige.
Alyssa provides a short questionnaire for the listener to define their definition of success at each stage in their life.
If some of those success definitions were met, congratulations, but it’s okay to shed old definitions that aren’t working, and it’s time to review what success will look like in the future.
The book “Bless and Release: The physics of letting go -and wanting what’s meant for you” by Danielle Laporte is suggested, which presents data showing that people are exhausted from trying to be “worthy” and offers ways to change that mindset.
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/1734679433?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback ]
Alyssa provides a reflection exercise for listeners to define their own definition of success at each stage of their lives, offering a method to reflect and learn while clarifying what success will look like in the future.
Want to watch the full webinar? Find it on our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@womenofflexo
