Define Success
Success is a concept that we talk about regularly but has an ambiguous definition.
If we look at it at its surface, success is an outcome. It is the accomplishment of an aim or purpose. If you do not accomplish said aim or purpose, it is considered to be a failure.
Without a clear definition of what success means to you, you are likely to default to others’ definitions of success.
When we talk about being successful socially, success can take on many definitions but is often thought of as material success.
Having a job of a certain status, having a nice house and a nice car. Success is looked at superficially and can be heavily influenced by your ability to present yourself. The way you dress, the way you speak, the way you hold yourself all influence the way people interpret if you are successful.
While material acquisitions can be a measure of success, it is often a misguided one. When we realize the misguided nature of this definition of success, it results in feelings of disappointment or emptiness.
When I think of what success looks like for me, there are material desires included in this. I’d be lying to you if I excluded them. I want a beautiful home, curated to the nth degree so it truly feels like my space. This includes a portion of the home or a secondary building on the property with a gym so I can stop wasting time commuting to gyms where I have to deal with other people.
It includes a nice car or two. It includes financial security and many… many pets. Not a hoarder situation but picture a high-class farm and you’ve got me.
While achieving these components would be wonderful side results, those aren’t the elements that would leave me feeling successful. They are bonus achievements.
What would leave me feeling successful is knowing that each day, I made decisions to achieve my potential. Each day I did something that has the propensity to impact others. There is no limit to this goal and I recognize that but if I can simply impact one more person, or one more living being, I will feel successful.
I view success from the point of reflection. What would I have wanted to accomplish in my life if I was sitting in the hospital with tubes running across my body and the little finger thing taking my pulse? That’s a technical term - only doctors will get it.
Where would my regrets come from?
When I think about it from this perspective, the house, the car, and the gym all sound like nice to haves but ultimately, they minimally fill my fulfillment bar from which I measure my success. I’d rather live in my current situation and have an impact than have those luxuries.
Notice I didn’t say the pets. We love pets and I can’t imagine a life without them. I would just condense my farm to the animals we value the most.
My pets and my ability to have an impact directly impact my fulfillment. They give me a sense of purpose. My definition of success is based on the fulfillment that I get out of my life. The pursuit of my ambitions directly impacts my fulfillment, increasing my feeling of being successful.
Our caring for and love towards our pets provides a unique satisfaction and fulfillment that contribute to my being successful.
This view allows me to assess success on a small, daily scale by determining if I am progressing towards my goals and leaving an impact on others (my wife and pets are included in others - I promise I care about her the most).
Ultimately, I won’t be able to address success on the black and white scale that we assess it on for others until my last moments but I know that if I am consciously working towards manifesting the life I desire and I do that more often than not, I will feel fulfilled and therefore like I am moving in the right direction.
Are you? What does success mean to you? What would the old, decrepit version of yourself have wanted you to do that you aren’t working on? Are the pursuits you are chasing moving you towards what would ultimately fulfill you the most?
You may be like me and find that you haven’t intentionally reflected on this as much as you could have leading to this moment. That’s okay. You have the opportunity to reflect now. Seize it.
When we play the game of “I’ll do it later,” we are not only hurting ourselves in the moment, but we are hurting that decrepit version of ourselves in the future. Compounding the likelihood that we put ourselves off until the moment that we can’t put it off another day.
Reflecting on what success and fulfillment means allows you to narrow the scope of the paths you can go down in life. Narrowing down the paths increases your propensity to achieve said success and fulfillment and gives more meaning to your life.
When your life has more meaning, you begin to live with more intention. When you begin to live with more intention, each day means more to you and you begin to cherish small moments you otherwise would have let meaninglessly escape.
