What Is Success ?
24 Jun 2020
Success is often defined as such :
- The favorable or prosperous termination of attempts or endeavors.
- The accomplishment of one's goals.
- The attainment of wealth, position, honors, or the like.
I am deeply convinced that success is not what most people think it is. Success is personal. It cannot be objectively defined. It also depends on where you are in your life. If you are studying, then success can simply mean getting your diploma. If you are working for a business company, it may mean being the employee of the year. Perhaps it even means becoming a millionaire.
Let us take the example of a youtuber. Some people will tell you that being successful means to get 100 000 subscribers, or even a million. It may be true for them, but does it have to be true for you ? What if having a YouTube channel and having fun shooting videos and showing them to people was success in itself ? What if you did not need to make thousands of millions of dollars from it to believe you are successful.
When it comes to blogging (or whatever activity, for that matter), I strongly believe that the very simple act of doing is a success. Even when I started, even with 0 follower and 0 reader, I considered myself successful. Every single step is a success as long as I keep doing it. Wealth or fame would only be a bonus, some extra lines on my resume which would finally matter much less than the whole journey.
As people may disagree, I will add that success depends on ambition. Your ambition. Not anyone else's. Again, ambition is a personal thing. To me, ambition is how far you put the target. I am aware however, that this definition is not the one that makes you happy in the long run.
If you want to become a lawyer, you don't have to wait to be finished with your studies and be 10 years into your career to be successful. You could be successful right now, by just realizing you are walking on the right path.
Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm
Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill defined success as pretty much standing back up every time you fell. I fully agree with this but I would argue that you can replace "success" in this sentence with "ambition".
"Ambition is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm"
As I see it, ambition also means holding on, committing to a goal and keeping to it. An ambitious individual is tenacious, resilient. They pursue success on a daily basis, because they know it secretly hides in all our actions, all our smallest choices, such as doing later what you really should be doing NOW.
There is one last quote I would like to share with you :
"Success is not how high you have climbed, but how you make a positive difference to the world."
Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart.
I figured it might inspire some of you and it wraps up pretty well what I have been saying in this article. Success is not the end goal. It is not reaching wealth, or fame, or any number of subscribers, or publishing a book, or getting that diploma... These are only facts of life which should not confuse with success. No. Success is in every step of your journey. Keep it in mind.
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Did you like this article ? What does success mean to you ? In your mind, is it reaching an end goal and, if so, what comes next ? Don't hesitate to leave a comment or share this post if you think it could (re)motivate somebody else. As usual, thanks for taking the time to drop by and read me. Till next time! :-)
