I recently have been struggling with what am I doing in life professionally and how successful am I, while my over thinking mode was on I stumbled upon the inevitable question of what is success really.
So, influenced by my professor that says that always reminds me that my essays or research papers should start with definition of the problem or issue in hand, I googled the definition of success and the first definition was “the accomplishment of an aim or purpose” but the second one was “the attainment of popularity or profit”. As The Pussycat Dolls say – Wait a minute now, how is this the same?!?!
Analyzing people and mindsets of societies when it comes to success I realized that generally success is connected to money, position, power, fame or something shiny and flashy so I kinda saw where does the second definition comes from but still the feeling that it is not right was still there because having popularity and profit is one of the possible goals of people that if we achieve we will get to our desired success but that doesn’t mean that it’s the only and ultimate purpose of everyone.
We all are different and have different goals and purposes so why are only successful when we have money or fame, but if our goal is to have a family and stay at home we are not successful, if our goal is to work as plumber we are not successful, if we don’t own our home before 40 we are not successful etc etc etc. Why is our success defined by other people’s idea of success, why are trying to reach goals that other people think that we should reach? Why, why, why ??? Mainly because of three things ego, fear and laziness.
Our success shouldn’t be determined by nobody’s idea but ours, it’s a cliché I know but it’s the truth. Once we beat the ego and it’s desire for praise, recognition and superiority; the fear of change, ending up alone or failing and get out of natural habitat of lazy comfort where work isn’t required, the kind of hard work it takes to go against yourself for bettering your self and creating a life you’re satisfied with, we will form our own meaning of success.
It sounds so simple in words, right? We all know it’s not. Sometimes we don’t even realize that the success we fight for is not our purpose, but someone else’s interpretation of success. In my daydreaming I saw my self successful only as a university professor. After questioning and analyzing myself I concluded that my goal derives from my desire to guide young people and build the confidence in them. But trying to keep it honest with myself, which isn’t that easy, I started questioning why then specifically a university professor, why not a high school or elementary school teacher, why not some other profession that influences young people’s lives. Because I wanted to prove to my traditional family that even though I am not a boy I can accomplish to be independent, important academic member of the society, that I can make them proud as well, the kind of pride they wouldn’t have if I was a high school professor because that is how things are set in our society.
I am still working on discovering my own goals, defining success accordingly to my beliefs and objectives and I learned that it’s ongoing process, that as we grow up and transform our goals transform with us and so does our success interpretation and that is OK as long as we are honest to our-self and fight the evil trio (ego,fear and laziness).
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