Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about success. Where does it come from? How can we define it? And how do the most “successful” people get there? Recent posts written by Grace and Jamie got me thinking even more and inspired me to add my thoughts to the conversation.
The way I see it, there are two ways to perceive success. First, there’s what “society” considers successful. “Society” varies from person to person: society is basically made up of those whose opinions you respect and who you may be influenced or pressured by. This might be the abstract “society” as a whole, experts in a specific field, your colleagues, your family, your friends, or your loved ones. Depending on who you respect and want to impress in life, you might be subject to different pressures and different definitions of success. Each person you’re influenced by might consider success to be correlated with wealth, happiness, educational achievement, bettering the world, or fame. Your mother might want you to be a doctor, your friends may want you to do entrepreneurship, or your significant other might be wishing you’d take a stable job to pay the bills. In any scenario, each person you know has different expectations for you.
And then there is what you yourself consider successful. What’s your own opinion of success? How do you define your own success and what would make you happiest? What are the goals you have set out for yourself, completely separate from what others might think of you? What excites you, and what are you genuinely passionate about?
If you are constantly attempting to achieve success through the first definition – by attempting to conform to the idea of success that your own personal “society” has set out for you – you will never be happy. Because everyone you know – your friends, loved ones, colleagues, professors, and society as a whole – all have differing ideas of what success means. You can’t make them all happy at the same time. Do you really want to live life chasing other peoples’ visions of success?
So here’s my opinion: if you want to be truly successful, you can’t chase the idea of success in the eyes of others. You have to consider first and foremost your own passions and your own desires, dreams, and hopes. And, you can’t chase success, period. If you follow your true passions and forget the “success” you’re trying to achieve, you will actually achieve that success.
Many of the people we consider incredibly successful today didn’t get there with the goal of being rich and famous, or of pleasing their friends and family. They never chased success for the sake of success itself. They have taken unconventional paths, and taken risks simply to do what they love. And they are so good at doing what they love that they are being recognized for it, and rightfully. J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter because she loved writing, and believed in her visions and passions – not with the end goal of being famous. Bill Gates left Harvard to work on Microsoft, not just to get rich fast but because he was genuinely passionate about software and his ideas. Muhammad Yunus’ idea of microfinance has become world renowned as an innovative development strategy and he has won the Nobel Prize – but he never pursued it because of a desire to be successful, but only out of his belief in and passion for the potential of microfinance to alleviate poverty.
So – forget, for a second, what others might think of you. Forget about how society views success, or what your parents or your spouse wants you to achieve. And instead, remember what it is you are most passionate about, what you truly love to do and want to do for the rest of your life. And dedicate yourself to that. Success cannot be a goal, but is often an outcome for those who simply do what they love and do it well.
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