Success - Adapt your concept Almost everybody desires to be successful in some way or another. There is no harm in wanting to be successful, it's an important aspect to being driven to do things. The problem is when you use someone elses gauge for your own success. The reason I'm writing this article is to help people understand that our measure of success is something we should be choosing for ourselves. Under pressure, people asked what they mean by successful and chances are they'll respond something along the lines of "being rich". The dictionary often defines success as being the gaining of wealth, position or the like. Fair enough but what is wealth and richness? Is wealth and richness defined only by the amassing of money or assets? I am sitting here writing this opinion piece on a lovely Saturday evening, the rain drifting down keeping the air cool, enjoying the company of my pets, smelling the aroma of the roast chicken that's working its way from the kitchen, the doors open without fear of burglary, I can't help but feel successful but there's apparently something wrong with this description. I'm not financially rich, not even close, so how can I even possibly think about considering myself as being successful? Success is achieving your goals, let's restate that, YOUR goals, getting the idea? Financial richness is some people's goal, however for most people it's simply a method of obtaining their desired concept of success. A lot of people seem to forget what their real goals are during their persuit for money. The capitalistic society will tell you that money is success, sadly this leaves a lot of financially rich people deluded and lost. Think of the number of times you hear or see financially rich people moaning about how they're utterly not happy at all despite being able to buy almost anything (to be fair, there's an equal number of people no doubt who moan that they don't have enough money but they too are also in the trap). Financial success is not always the same thing as personal success. Some people would argue that by changing what you define as success is akin to lowering the bar to make it easier for you to get over, simply not true. Consider the situation where one person aspires to be able to write novels and have them published, to another person this might be an apparently insurmountable task "I can't stand writing". The dollars in your accounts is just one measure of possible success, it's not always the true or right measure. So what is your real idea of success, the success that you want, not the success that someone on the TV is trying to sell you (probably so they can achieve their own success). I believe the following items are important when it comes to defining what you are going to consider success for yourself;
Try this as something to do; Sit yourself down for 15 minutes, even 5 minutes and try to think of the things that you'd love to be doing (or not), try to be as specific as possible, for me, the following things come up
Your selection is going to be different of course, just make sure you have a selection. Persuing money or finiancial richness for the sake of itself generally leads you to a dead end, it saps you of your impetius to strive and work because it's quite likely not your true measure of success. When you have some honest goals and marks of success you hopefully will find that life is more satisfying and your goals somewhat more attainable.
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