Success is a problematic word. It’s also an enigma, elusive and eclectic, a protean and peremptory proposition, and a compelling conception of a mind seeking finiteness and substance. No wonder, the logical question, what is success?
Success is difficult to define. Because it is indeterminate being a function of mind. Success to one is a trap for the other; and a failure of one is the ultimate triumph for another. For a yogi pursuing a path of self-discovery and salvation, the king’s riches and majesty carry no meaning; and to an ambitious entrepreneur seeking fortune foregoing opportunities may appear naive and foolish doomed to fail. The range of how one perceives and evaluates success is amazing, even incomprehensible. And yet, while it is very individualistic, it enjoys the near universal acceptance of seemingly a common code of branding men and women successful or otherwise.
This commonly understood view of success deals with tangible goals and their achievement. If one achieves them, one is successful. Inability to accomplish the desired goal is branded as a failure. But this must be construed as the most superficial or gross definition of success. Success must mean far more than this.
For one, it defines success in terms of events or specific tasks. One can successfully accomplish a task or other wise. Does it then make the performer successful? Performing a task successfully and being a successful person may still be very different things. Does a sum of all your successes makes you success. Perhaps, but not necessarily! The sum of parts does not make the whole. In this realm, the whole is often more than the sum of parts.
A sensible way to understand success, in my view, more so in the context of becoming a successful person is to become a better person. ‘When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too’, wrote Paul Coelho. This definition of success is far more complete and embracing. And this may come to you effortlessly if you decide to feel so. Steve Jobs considered pursuing a passion the greatest pleasure of life, one that is bound to get you success.’Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it’. What a unique way to describe what must define success.
Success also substantially involves effort. A success without an effort invariably leaves one with an emptiness that robs one of the joy of success. It becomes a task completed and not a celebration. In fact, it is the effort and its intensity and sincerity that make success a success in the real sense. ‘Success is not final; failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts’ observed Winston Churchill regarded as one of the most successful politicians.
The road to success and the road to failure are almost the same. It is the process of journey that makes it a success or a failure. Discouragements and failures, in themselves, do not define a man. Making them the stepping stones and to develop success from them is what defines a successful man.
In the ultimate analysis, success is peace of mind, which is direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable. A success that does not bring happiness, to me, is no success.Success may be getting what you want but the real success that must be synonymous with happiness lies in liking what you get. If success eludes despite a whole hearted effort and integrity of purpose, it must cause neither disappointment nor heartburn..
Shorn of sophistications of articulation, free of hyperboles and innuendoes, clear of cleverness and conceit, success to me means all that brings happiness to me. It is scale neutral and event neutral. The only truth that matters is did my action in some way nurtured my soul and caressed my conscientiousness. Everything else is failure.
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