Happiness and Success
How do you define success? What are the parameters of judging whether a person is successful or not? At what level of success do people deserve to spend their lives “happily ever after?”
Happiness and success are indeed correlated but we tend to reverse the chain of causality in this relationship.
Being happy and content with one’s state is a matter of choice, not circumstance. Leading the lives of our dreams is a bit farfetched, it is more practical to make realistic and achievable goals in life. This does not in any way mean that one should limit their vision, one must simply realize that failure is a possibility and hence be prepared to face it.
Many people tend to associate success with money and power. But no matter how much a person possesses, they will always crave more. How can someone be successful if they want more? With unfulfilled goals, can a rich and powerful person be construed as being successful? Of course not.
Success, therefore, is not a measure of what a person possesses or the achievement of a certain set of goals. Both of these criteria remain ever-expanding in our lives. Being successful is being happy with what you have achieved. If you feel like you have come a long way and are happy about it, you are successful.
Whatever it is that you do, repetition and consistency will lead towards perfection, although you will never reach this point — it doesn’t even exist. Perfection is a path, not a goal, to put it in the immortal phrasing of Paul Kalanithi:
“You can’t ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving.” (When Breath Becomes Air)
You may not see the effects immediately, be patient, you will see them soon enough. The important thing though is to be happy with the results. You have goals, we all have goals but it doesn’t take too much to just appreciate yourself for all that you have done.
Happiness causes success, if you have a reason to smile when you think of what you have done, you are successful. Try not to be too picky, even the smallest accomplishments mean a great deal down the road. Life is a constant struggle, incessant strife that will end only when we are no more, so wouldn’t it be nice if we paused and enjoyed it a bit?
We spend our entire lives striving towards a series of never-ending goals, thinking that at the end of this road, we will find happiness. But there is no end to this road, new goals will keep popping up even before we’ve had a chance to accomplish previous ones.
We will find happiness only by taking a moment to look at all that we have done and not at what remains to be done. Happiness and success are not different, they are the same. If you are happy with your life, you have led it successfully.
Originally published at https://pk.mashable.com on May 7, 2020.
