Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer is pictured on the cover of Fortune’s “50 Most Powerful Women” issue (released Oct. 6). She looks incredibly powerful, wearing a sleek and chic black dress with short blond hair and a strong hand on her teeny-tiny waist. What she doesn’t look is pregnant (which she was when the story was being developed). But how do you Photoshop a pregnancy away? You don’t – the photo is actually from 2009.

While some will argue that Marissa posing with her pregnant belly would have been an inspiration to moms everywhere, that’s not Fortune’s mission. Marissa represents a small percentage of the female gender (the top 50 most influential) and frankly, a small percentage of humankind. It appears that Marissa has it all: career, marriage, children, youth. While very powerful on paper, does being Marissa Mayer really define success?

Success is one of the most subjective words in the English language. The dictionary defines success as the attainment of wealth, position, honors or the like. However, it’s more important to define what success means to you. Employees at all stages of their careers, whether they’re a tenured executive or a fresh-out-of-college job seeker should be able to define their goals, both professional and personal, or at least have a generic idea they can speak to. Employers want to know that you care about your own personal success and most importantly, that your definition of success aligns with the job you’ve been hired, or are interviewing, to do.

How should you begin to define success for yourself?

For me, success is defined by the feelings of happiness and fulfillment that come from a completed action. Think about what makes you happiest in each aspect of your life. Here are some questions to get you started:

Work (career, school, philanthropy): Do you wake up in the morning excited to go to the office? Do you enjoy the people you work with, the tasks you complete, and the mission you work toward? If not, what are you doing to change that? You spend the majority of your day working … why aren’t you enjoying it?

Relationships (family, friends, human interaction): Do you have healthy relationships with people who allow you to be yourself? Do you have a constant support system to help you through the rocky times? Are you happy the majority of the time with the people you surround yourself with? Removing toxic relationships, while hard to do, are often the very roadblocks that need to be removed to help you reach the next goal.

Health (mind, body, spirit): Are you using your body to its fullest potential? Are you filling your body with nutrients that are good for you and will keep up your well-oiled machine for the long haul? Do you have enough energy to actually enjoy being successful? Unless you’ve got a pretty good medical excuse, make sure you really take the time to take care of yourself.

Finances (debt, savings, investments): Are you making conscious decisions to eliminate the debt in your life? Are you investing in the right things? Do you have a small percentage of your paycheck going toward a savings account? While it’s incredibly easy to accrue debt, especially with the current economic crisis our world is in, paying it off is exceptionally hard. It really is never too soon to start making smart financial decisions.

Marissa Mayer has clearly defined her priorities in each of these arenas. She’s reached a high corporate stature at a young age and now she’s working on building a family – perhaps the next step in her path to true success. Success isn’t reached instantaneously. It takes a lifetime to determine. When all is said and done, will you have reached true success?