How We Define Success Matters and here is why!

When you first think about success, it is easy to fall into the trap of evaluating how much you earn or trying to calculate your potential future earnings. How much you are worth in financial terms has come to define how successful we are. Or at least how successful we think we are.

What if you could free yourself from such a world where your worth is only equal to your net worth? What if you could be valued for who you are, not what you do or how much you earn.

It seems counter-intuitive to think of anything other than net worth as a way to work out how much you are worth. Why is this so? Let us travel back in time to a time when financial wealth was not the focal point of society. Yes, that is a very long time ago. How did people value themselves and others then?

Value

What is value? Maybe we should start with what value means. Value has come to mean the estimated monetary worth. However this puts us right back in the trap of measuring yourself by what your net worth is and how much you earn.

A Makeover for Value

There is another paradigm that is far more helpful and freeing when it comes to both success and value. I believe that value is intrinsic. There was once a man who gave a speech about self-esteem. It did not end the way you think.

He started his speech by taking out a $50 bill. After asking people to raise their hands if they wanted the bill, he crumpled it. Asking again, who wanted the $50 bill, many hands still went up. This time he responded by throwing the bill on the ground and asking who still wants it. Many hands still went up. He proceeded to stand on the $50 bill and twist his foot, careful not to break it. Once again many hands went up when he asked who still wants the bill.

Picking up the $50 bill and holding it above his head, he concluded that a $50 bill is a $50 bill. Therefore it does not matter if it is crumpled, thrown on the floor, or stepped on. In the same way a person has intrinsic worth.

This man, not only successfully communicated his point. In addition, he provided us with a proof that we have intrinsic value, adding that our value is beyond what we can imagine.

A Makeover for Success

Success has as many definitions as people in the world.

We look to money to value everything. It has become so common that we look to money to value ourselves. How much we earn or our net worth is an easy, quick, and convenient way of measuring how successful we are as people. However this too is not true.

Before there was such a “gold standard” of measuring ourselves, we used to measure ourselves with how honorable we were. In other words, we used to ask ourselves and each other if we or the other person kept to his or her word. This was the ultimate way to determine a person’s value or self-worth. It was also a good measure of how successful you were.

Success cannot be defined in monetary terms because it comes in all shapes and sizes. Here is why. Try ask an athlete how successful he or she is. What about asking a musician? How about a musician who is blind, like Stevie Wonder? How would they define success and how does thinking about each of these different people change your definition of success.

You can be successful in the corporate world. However we all know stories about successful business men who sacrifice time with their families and are therefore not successful husbands and fathers. There are those who are successful in the corporate world and are also successful at being husbands and fathers.

Hotels and chefs are graded. Should we be evaluating people’s success based on how many stars they have been rated? What would you say is a successful actor? Is it only someone who is in Hollywood movies or is it someone who acts the lead role in a sitcom? Are the only successful actors those with Hollywood stars? Or is someone who wins an Oscar successful? A closely related example would be singers or bands. How are their successes measured?

Then you can ask a teacher how he or she grades papers, especially for subjects like creative writing or poetry. How does an art teacher grade an art project, especially one made by a 10 year old?

Who is Successful?

It should not take much to convince you know that success comes in many shapes and sizes. Assuming you are thinking about other people, take a moment to re-focus on yourself. How do you measure your success? Try thinking about yourself in different contexts, for example, at work or working on a hobby. Has your definition changed? What about when you are helping someone achieve something, for example teaching your child how to walk?

Success might be elusive to define, but if you think about it carefully you will find you have your own definition. Then again, you might realize that you have multiple definitions of success for yourself. You might define yourself as successful in 1 area of your life and not yet successful, but on your way to success, in another area. You might not be recognized on the street and stopped for autographs, but it does not mean you are not successful!

Conclusion

Every person is valuable and successful. It takes a bit of effort to work out what these terms mean and how they apply to you because they apply to everyone. There is no one-size-fits-all definition to success.

If you had to come up with a definition of success what would your definition be now? More challenging than you thought, but I am sure you can be successful at finding something that fits you the best.