Success is a mindset which perpetuates an accumulation of actions which fulfill a person’s values, maintains their sense of self, and puts them closer to their the goals regardless if they gain merit or recognition.
To become successful is to become an enigma, to care for others, and to live a meaningful and fulfilling life.
We live in a world consumed by conformity and social control. Social media and external rewards dictate a lot of how we view each other and our sense of accomplishment. However, this limited view can terrify oneself to the point where we lose our sense of independence and identity. A combination of this loss of self and attachment to social conformities causes the majority of the population to think that money, fame, and power are the pillars of what it means to be successful.
I disagree.
What if the measures of success are more than just the objective, external focused viewpoint?
Objectivity vs Subjectivity
When we think of success we think of tangible goals or quantifiable measures (eg. money, completing a number of tasks, writing a certain amount of words, etc) — this what I refer to as tangible success. If we can objectively define the parameters of success and what it means to be successful you have defined a tangible measure. The problem with this thought process is it dumbs it down to something that takes the human out of the equation — emotions and emotional response.
Emotions and emotional response is one main facet of what makes us human and how we make decisions. It is extremely hard for us to make objective decisions without taking into account our values and morals. As such, it should be part of our exploration of what success is. The subjective experience of success, whether that is the morals/values governing our actions toward or definition of a goal, is what I will refer to as subjective success. That is to say, that if our values and morals control our emotions and actions, that can lead to failure — especially if that set of parameters focus our minds on the negative.
These definitions of success requires one another to exist.
For example, when we choose our goals we are not purely looking at the objective outcome (ie. the number of scientific papers we wrote) rather we are basing our action on a subjective measure (ie. I want to share this valuable experiment so that society can benefit off of it) then deciding whether or not a goal is worth pursuing.
I am arguing that if we solely look at the outcomes of the tangible success we lose our human aspects, and if we solely look at the outcomes of subjective success we could end up going nowhere.
These goals that I talk about make up what I will refer to as goal-oriented success.
Commitment
Goal-oriented success gets at the idea of commitment. To succeed is to commit to something. Asking a stranger to coffee is a win condition despite the outcome because you have created a scenario where you could win or you could lose — you give yourself the opportunity to succeed tangibly. If you don’t choose to take that action, you doom yourself to failure.
This rudimentary example can apply to any action that needs to be taken towards a goal.
“If you don’t fail, you’re not even trying.” - Denzel Washington
It is necessary to take advantage of goal-oriented success if tangible success and subjective success are what you want to achieve. Taking such actions and committing to them in itself is already success.
Recognition
Let us say, that in the example given above you are recognized by your friends as taking a leap of faith. So much so, that you are in some form superior to them as you took that action. This is a form of recognition and is very common in our day and age due to the accessibility of social media and the internet.
It is as easy to give and receive recognition as it is to feel as though you have none. This paradox fuels rumination and self-doubt.
I argue that one does not need to be recognized to be successful.
By looking at someone’s outward appearance you can attribute certain social status onto them but do you know really what is going in their world?
This simple reframing of thought and viewpoints gives insight into the fact that, we don’t know if someone is succeeding. Even those who are achieving a high level of tangible success could be failing to succeed subjectively — in that case then do we say that they are successful or succeeding? I am not sure.
The problem arises when someone is winning, but taking morally ambiguous steps toward completing that goal.
Moral Ambiguity
If my goal is to win a race, I could theoretically dope myself up with steroids and other performance enhancing drugs to really boost my athletic abilities. This is, in most cases, cheating. Now, I win the race and take the trophy home. I have achieved tangible, goal-oriented success and quite possibly also subjective success as well.
But morally, many would agree that this is very wrong, especially if I am competing in a race which considers performance enhancing drugs as cheating.
This is how I define moral ambiguity — achieving success despite going against an individual’s or socially acceptable morals.
As much as many people would like to disagree, immoral success is still success.
There is merit to learning from immoral success, but you must be careful that you don’t buy into the immoral behavior.
Breaking Barriers
Sometimes, what others think as immoral is just plain wrong or goes against our own morals. This is what I would call a barrier.
There are many barriers that are quite apparent, such as “women can’t do certain jobs because they aren’t qualified” or “high-schoolers are not meant to work or sit in on business meetings”.
When these barriers are broken or challenged, we are succeeding. To challenge the status quo is to win — whether for good or bad.
Our society benefits from trailblazers, weirdos, and people who say “no, this isn’t how things should be.” There are many examples of amazing people such as Martin Luther King Jr and just as many examples of terrible people such as Adolf Hitler. And, as much as I despise people who do bad on the world, our world wouldn’t be what it is without bad actors.
For example, 9/11 revolutionized airplane travel, making airplane travel much safer than it was before… would that have been the case if 9/11 didn’t occur? I am not sure.
Empathy
By accepting that bad actors are necessary for good, positive change we must learn to empathize. We may not agree with everyone’s version of success, but every person’s of version of success is worth analyzing and learning from.
It is certainly hard to think about things this way, but if you can (and healthily) then it can be quite powerful.
Conclusion
To wrap things up. These are 5 facets of success which, in this moment in time, are super important to my definition. If we are stuck on the classic justification of fame, money, and power we miss out on a lot of what life is and what it means to be human.
By no means is this a final definition. It is simply my… working definition :)