Your private standards eventually determine what public success feels like.

How success feels is determined largely by how it was obtained. The same achievement can sit comfortably or sit uneasily depending on what you did along the way, and no amount of external recognition adjusts that. Your private standards are what set the internal experience of the public result.

While you are still on the way to something, pay attention to the methods rather than only the outcome. Ask whether you would be at ease describing how you got there. That question costs little now and determines whether the arrival is something you can actually enjoy.