What the hell even is success?
Success to me is different than success to you. Don’t take that as your success is irrelevant, because no one’s is, but each person should be allowed to define their goals as they see fit. Personally, I can’t even tell you when I’ll feel as if I’ve been successful, because I’ll feel little moments of accomplishment every so often, but big picture goals seem so far away. Those big picture goals can be daunting sometimes. I can’t even fully describe the big picture goal, I have basic outlines of it. If you’ve read my description in my profile (which if not, I highly suggest you do, it’s riveting) you can deduce that I’m in broadcasting, specifically sports broadcasting, and I’m still in school studying around that topic. Clearly working around such a specific field should mean I have an idea of what I want to do out of school, right?
Wrong.
I want to do something similar to what I’ve already done during college, whether it be calling games, or working as a journalist, but I’m still not sure yet. That uncertainty is what leads me to my main response.
I don’t currently agree with the points made by Shawn Achor in this TED Talk about feelings of happiness leading to improved success. For me, happiness is reliant on a couple of factors, such as confidence for the future. I wouldn’t be too happy if I’m uncertain of the near future, and in college, that’s kind of what you deal with. I don’t have careers lined up, I don’t have the next couple of years planned out and it leaves me uncertain. Don’t get me wrong, though, I’m really happy with the way things are, I’ve accomplished a lot in these past couple of years, and the successes I’ve had have made me happy, but it does even more. In my mind there’s other steps between success and happiness, each relying on the one before, looping back into a single circle. I’ll try to explain, and maybe draw a picture, we’ll see how well it goes. I believe it starts with success. You succeeded in something you were striving for and you’re happy with that, but that happiness becomes confidence. The confidence you have in yourself now makes you strive for something more, something you want to succeed in. See where that went? Circle. Here’s a diagram.
What I see from this is that the goals continue to grow, as does the success, as does the rest of it. It’s purely cyclical. I suppose some time way down the road there is some ending success, and I have end goals I want to achieve, but those just kind of hang around. I’ll hit the end goals eventually, but they’re too far away at this point, so the circle works for now. My definition of success isn’t perfect, hell it isn’t even really complete, but that doesn’t mean I have no motivation. My success makes me happy, and makes me want to succeed more.
