What is success?

Just what is success? What does that really mean? Success may be gaining wealth, a happy life, or being better than everyone else. Success may be global or defined by each individual. Whatever success is, millions are striving toward it and few are achieving it.

So technically, what is success? Success is a level of social status, or achieving an objective or a goal. So I suppose that simply put, success is whatever you define as a milestone for your efforts. It may be as simple as finding the right person to spend your life with, or as complex and difficult as ruling the world. This is all well and good, but why is it that so few seem to achieve true success? And what is it that makes one successful?

Quite possibly, most people never even ask themselves “What is success to me?” Honestly, have you stopped and defined success to yourself? Most of us trudge along each day doing what we are supposed to do, what we are told to do, and what society dictates that we do. At the end of the day if we’ve satisfied our obligations that is some sort of marker for success. But does this define success to us, or the people around us? Maybe my view is narrow, maybe I’m the only one who isn’t clear what success means to me. I leave that for you to decide for yourself.

Ultimately, I suppose I would define success in a very general way as if viewing my life from the grave. If I have managed to support myself, make some contributions, and have some fun along the way, then that is what success is to me. More specifically, each day that I achieve what I set out to do, finish a project, or satisfy some need, I define this as a measure of success.

What is success to you? Is it completing your life’s work, doing something good for someone each day, making a million? Maybe I should rethink my previous assumption that few achieve success, maybe I just make the definition more unreachable than it truly is. Maybe success just means you’ve woken up still breathing and have another chance to add to the world.

 

 

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