Success is as illusive as riches, as hard to define as love, and as fleeting as youth. No one who has lived long on this earth can entirely escape the battle to win it and yet there are very few, I think, who would count themselves among the numbers who have won it. It isn't something you can win once and be done, but it must be won continually and the battle fought daily. Many lose heart and quit fighting, others lose their way, looking for success in easy things, deceiving themselves, and still others think that success is for someone else and make no real attempt to find it. If we can agree that almost everyone would like to have success then I can show that everyone who wants it can achieve it, if they know how.
Success can be divided into two types; the first being a short-term, goal-oriented, daily type and the second a long-term, what-you-have-become, personal type. Dividing success this way helps us to stay away from the trap of thinking that all success is the same, hence all failure is the same. I could be a thief, and successfully plan and carry out a robbery while failing to live up to the best within myself. In this case, success and failure are the same. It seems important then, that we decide early and often what it is we hope to become, long-term and tailor our short-term goals to fit the picture we have of ourselves.
Defining short and long-term success can only be done by the individual. Only you can decide what you want out of life and only you can achieve it. We set ourselves up for failure by not defining success and then become angry with ourselves for failing. It is like expecting a child to navigate a busy street blindfolded, then punishing them for getting hit by a car.
For me, short-term success is first of all, being alive. I consider it a daily success when I can open my eyes on this world and see another day. There were times in my life when I thought I would not live to see the morning, so when I do, that is success. Happiness is also success whenever and wherever I find it or share it. I learned to do those things that gave me a sense of well-being and lasting happiness and I learned to avoid doing things that caused me to be less than satisfied with myself. I stopped looking for more money, more things, and more authority. Those dark treasures are like a drug; they put you to sleep while real success passes you by. When I started measuring the success of my day by the amount of time I spent being happy I discovered that I didn't need any other success than that.
Long-term success requires more planning and consideration than short-term, but the rewards are far-reaching and well worth the effort. I have attended numerous funerals in my life, and I am always amazed at the lives of the ordinary people around me. I am confident that the people whose funerals I attended would not have thought of themselves as successful by any standard, but the people who attended the funerals, including those who were not acquainted with the deceased, in every case were convinced of the ultimate success of that individual. But why should there be such a difference in how others view our success and how we view it? I think it all boils down to size. We want to measure our success by a big measuring stick, like how big our house was, how much money we made, how many awards we received, how many people we impressed, how long the applause lasted etc.
But in the end, the people at the funerals invariably talked about the success of the person in terms of how much they loved and were loved. Leave out the awards, the applause, the money, the accomplishments and what do you have? Just the person you have become. Ask yourself what kind of person you want to become and you will have the recipe for success. Once you have the recipe, the cookin's easy.
Define success and you will achieve it. And remember that success is not necessarily happiness, but true happiness will always be success.
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