Today's society defines success in monetary terms. How successful a person is depends on not what she has achieved but how that achievement has helped her earn more money than others. Large houses at right addresses, bigger and louder cars, extravagant lifestyle, excessive gadeteering, symbols of having arrived in society - right clothes, right friends, right social life - all aspects easily begotten through money defines Accomplishment and Happiness.
It is high time we all have a rethink about what 'success' means to each of us. Do we follow the herd and join the rat race in acquiring the trappings of success (which we may not necessarily want) to fulfil the requirements of the age or do we muster the courage to go our own way and define success as it speaks to us.
Have you ever thought about what it is that you really want? Is it material wealth or a happy married life or being satisfied with your job or recognition and fame, or self-actulization, or a certain place in understanding religion or fulfilment of your child's dream or perhaps all of these? What I have observed is that most people have only vague idea about what is important to them, and what their expectations are from themselves. Generally we let others decide for us, by default, what it is that ought to be important to us, what it is that we must have to feel content, and nuture a healthy sense of pride in doing the best by and for ourselves.
I have had a tumultous relationship with success and failure. I was never happy with whatever I achieved, always having set my eyes on the next goal, I considered myself essentially a 'failure' most of my life, an under-achiever, and a woman unable to reach her potential. I was always short of being 'there' and in my own measure a loser.
Now, from the vantage point of age and life I feel I was plain cruel to myself, I put all my endeavors down, I never appreciated all what I did because I was gauging myself from someone else's measure of what it means to be successful. I was always trying to monetize my accomplishments and trying to compete with a standard that was neither mine, nor sensible to my circumstances.
Now I see lots of young people doing the same, getting on that eternal treadmill of working for things they may not necessarily desire, and not even know it till it's too late.
I have tried to install in my teenage son the skill and confidence to find what would make him happy, content and satisfied with himself in life. I have tried hard to make him and myself stay away from the societal definitions of success - grades, gadgets, right references, and social circle that would make him aspire for things just because the majority aspires them. It is a difficult enterprise for I have to check with myself again and again what would constitute success in the true sense.
I believe the following qualifications ought to do:
Success is being stress free (as much as humanely possible) and enjoy living life - meaning doing what you love and living the way that would make you happy irrespective of what others think.
Success is having a strong support system - having strong family ties, deep meaningful friendships, putting all of one's efforts into people instead of things.
Success is leaving a content and healthy legacy in form of children, or acts, leaving assets and history that make the world a better place than before.
Success is having the courage to accept yourself the way you are.
Success is having all you want and wanting it all once you have it.
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