For me the recognition for the things I do was always the messure for success, not even material things.. I live in a country where everything's so complicated than focusing on material things to feel good or living the dream suddenly faded away. Either way I can tell that even as I grew up and things were more normal, I always felt that need of recognition.. I had a wonderful job and there was a point in which i noticed it was impossible to grow since my labor had zero recognition, no one knew nothing from me.. Frankly I've struggled with the subject. For a time I even felt weird and guilty like "is it bad that I want people to praise me for my work?"... But after a while i've been working on myself, and I can finally say i'm good at what I do, I love what I do and I have skills that maybe others don't since we are all gifted in different ways. When I started sending that positive message to myself I started feeling finally succesfull.