What does success means, really?

What is success? Why do we live worried and obsessed with having it, when sometimes we don’t even know what it means? Why is it so important in our society to succeed? It’s important for whom?

For a long time achieving success was a major concern of mine. And I bet it was, or still is, a major concern of most people reading this. It was one of those worries that ‘plays’ in the back of your mind, like background music. I wasn’t all the time thinking “I have to be successful”, in fact I think I didn’t think anything like that. But I was constantly trying to achieve an ideal, which was in fact unattainable. Because every time I achieved a goal, immediately another one would come up, and then that new one was even more important.

This insatiable hunger was mostly related to what others might think about me or how they might value me: I wanted my friends to think that I was really cool, my colleagues to think that I was very competent, my parents to be proud of me, etc.. But I never felt that what I was doing was actually helping me get the approval I was looking for.

This continued search made me feel a constantly unsatisfied. On the other hand there were things that I thought would get me the approval I wanted, but they were things that for strong reasons I didn’t want to do. Especially because they were against my values or my personality.

One day I heard someone talk about this concern with success and I related to it. So I started questioning myself about it. One of the first things I did was looking for the “official” meaning of the word success. I share my findings with you:

According to several English dictionaries “success” means: the achieving of the results wanted or hoped for; something/someone that achieves positive results; person or thing that attains fame, wealth, or social status, etc.

We can summarise the concept in two key ideas: on the one hand the idea of a positive result or a goal fulfilled, and on the other, the attainment of popularity, fame and/or wealth.

This demystifies the idea of success, doesn’t it? I know that being famous doesn’t interest me, and being rich is not a goal in which I put any effort so what is my concept of success? Obtaining positive results and achieving my objectives?

Whenever I reach my goals I am succeeding or being successful? But this happens constantly!

And finally the search was over.

A list of accomplished goals and positive results from recent times confirmed my assumption. And finally I felt like a successful person.

I ended up creating my own concept of success, one that better encompassed what I came to feel as success: living my life as I want to live it in that moment. I periodically review my “current success”. For that I just have to ask myself if I’m living my life the way I want and answer myself sincerely. If I realize the answer is no, then it’s because there are things that need to be changed. Specific and achievable things that can be changed within a more or less predictable or estimated time frame. Goals that, once fulfilled, put me in the life I want to have, at that moment.

“In that moment” are keywords. We are constantly growing, changing, evolving and so we must accept that what we want from life is also changing. The trick is not to see life as a constant succession of levels in an endless game, but rather as a set of games that you win or lose (failing is an important part of life and it teaches us more than winning) where no game is more important than the previous one. In other words it’s about seeing success as a set of cumulative successes and failures and not as something unattainable.

I also started seeing the success of others with different eyes. I suddenly realised how many successful people I had around me. And I realised that those people who looked successful but are just playing the endless game are not really(successful). They are not successful for a very simple reason: they do not feel successful, because success is there on that even higher level of the game. I realised that success will never come if you are waiting for other people to give you a trophy. You have to put all the medals around your own neck, and it doesn’t matter that others can’t see or understand them.

I’ll end up with something even more personal: Reflecting on success made me realize that I was very dependent on my father’s opinion of me as a gauge for my success. In fact, I spent a big part of my life worried about making him proud. On the other hand, my father and I have very different ways of seeing and understanding the world and life in general. I realised that it was useless to try to find something that made him feel that I had followed his footsteps and at the same time something that made me happy. So I decided to believe that what parents really wants is for their children to be happy. And I realised that I just had to worry about my happiness and that everyone else should worry mostly about their own.

What is your concept of success? Do you consider yourself successful?

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be are successful. — Albert Schweitzer (amendment to the original quote by Nico)