How to Define Success for Yourself from Eight Billion Choices

“I like people that define their own values. I am much more interested in somebody who has their own definition of what they value, their own definition of what success is, their own definition of what love is.” — Spike Jonze

Success is the most sought- after achievement in the life of Homo Sapiens. A child is brought up being fed old and new success stories. Parents feel some story may appeal to the child, which may become strong enough to become a goal of his life.

I grew up in a very well educated family. My mother and father taught me to follow my inner voice for choosing a career in life. Although I knew the choice of my father for my career, he wanted me to join Administrative Services.

To honor the wish of my father I sat in the Competitive Test but could not qualify in the first attempt. Instead, I got a chance to be an officer in paramilitary force but both my father and mother opposed. I joined the teaching profession as it being the need of the time at that turning point of my life. It was my situation that led me to this profession but soon a call from inside guided me to develop a passion to enjoy it. During my two and half decade career, I headed three schools and mentored hundreds of teachers.

People believe that someone else’s success is a model to follow. But it doesn’t seem to be true. Neither can we borrow success nor lend. People who define their own values and explore their own success are true success heroes.

Four things to prove success is personal

“Define success on your own terms, achieve it by your own rules, and build a life you’re proud to live”. — Anne Sweeney

Some believe in miracles and overnight success. Others wrestle with the outcome of ceaseless efforts towards a successful goal. People have fixed a criterion to evaluate success in terms of money, power, respect and dignity, achieved and possessed.

In fact, success is a very personal matter. You need to choose your own conditions and the way how to achieve it. Others can’t dictate you.

1. It can’t be imposed on our children.

“Never define your success by somebody else’s success. I never looked at another man’s grass to tell how green mine should be”. — Xzibit

So often parents try to live vicariously through their kids and force them to be or live the way they could not. This robs the children of their agency and right to self-actualize. A superb version of this is told with great sadness in Dead Poet’s Society when a young boy who badly wants to be an actor is bullied by his father to take another career path and ends up taking his life.

So many of us don’t realize how we rob our children of their right to find their own expression of success when we shove at them to succeed at sports or medicine or whatever WE might have wanted for ourselves. We fail to realize at the moment that our definition of success could never match with another. Success is an outcome of what we possess inside and that can never be the same in two persons.

Khalil Gibran said it best, that our children are arrows that we send out. We cannot, do not have the right to cripple them.

2. It means something different to each one of us.

“To everyone of us, success has different meanings. Being rich does not really mean you’re successful. Success is making your set goals and dreams become reality. Seeing your dreams come to play is the truest success one can get in life”. — Nero Pens

For some, sheer survival. For others, the survival of endangered species. For others, surviving another day in quarantine with an abusive partner. The measurements anyone has for success, might relate, might not relate to anyone who does not share our circumstances.

To me, it offers tremendous grace to accept that where anyone is in life, our conditions, what is available to us. All of these guide what success may look like.

People look at success as an ultimate achievement. They are eager to learn from other’s success journey which may hardly help them on the road to success. Because it can be changed from individual to individual, the mindset and the circumstances.

If you feel comfortable, and you feel happy, and successful at your job, then that’s success. You define that as success, then that’s success. Success is not general thing. It’s a personal attribute. —Lupe Fiasco

3. It is unique.

“There’s nothing that says you have to succeed in the same way as someone else. In fact, there’s nothing that says you must define success in the same way as someone else.” — Ralph Marston

Each of us defines success uniquely. Living in a big city may be a dream for some but for the other a nightmare. Money, power, pomp and show attract many but not all. The kind of companionship is inspiring for some but suffocating for the other. Both are right. That’s the soul of diversity.

4. It cannot be emulated.

“A certain formula for an unhappy life is pursue someone else’s definition of success. Until you define your own goals and purposes, your life is not your own and there can be no sense of fulfillment, no matter how much you achieve”. — Michael Josephson

You can find nine out of ten people with no goal. People follow the footprints of some so-called successful person. What is the result of pursuing others’ success goal? What is the success rate of following successful people? Many of us know, it is far far below the level of satisfaction.

A blind chase after success, cannot make you successful until you make your own purpose and goal clear to fuel you.

We sometimes judge others’ circumstances in the light of our own. Allowing each to find his own path to determine what they experience as a happy, even a triumphant life, is the epitome of grace.

The Bottom line

The bottom line is that success is hard to pin down because it can’t be emulated. It’s just that ‘unique thing’ which we can neither share nor compare but only build up our own. It is a personal blessing to follow our inner voice and create our own success story with a message to our children to do the same.

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Disclaimer: The original version of this story was published on another platform. Link to original version: https://medium.com/illumination/how-to-define-success-for-yourself-from-eight-billion-choices-d3d6c5e90c16