What is success to you?

[kinatra]

I just was interested in reading what success is to everyone else. Whether it's health, happiness, wealth, etc.? I'd really like to know.

[David83]

To me success is getting everything that you have aimed for in life, whether it be a jop you have always wanted, a house, the perfect partner e.t.c, because everyone wants to meet their perfect partner, and hopefully grow up with them and get married and live happily ever after dont they?, well i do, and i feel i have found that partner but we are having problems getting to this happily ever after stage!

[pcardoso]

Just being happy with myself and knowing everyday I'll try to make a difference in this world.

I'm healthy and that counts a lot… I don't have all the money I wish but I can manage … and despite some rough times (due a recent break-up)… I think myself as a success woman. Why? Because… I know each day I'm giving the best I can and have some dreams i know i can and will accomplish.

 

Sorry my telegraphic post, but I'll have to go to a work dinner. Anyway, I think you got the idea

[skyjuice]

Hi

 

What is success to me? Em....this is a question that got me thinking quite often.

 

Success is accomplishing your dream you set for yourself.

Success is having a career you love.

Success is having a home and family that would support you in whatever.

Success is doing things that you are proud of.

Success is holding on to your value.

Success is saying at the face of a failure, "It is not that I do not have the gut to do it, it is because I am not good enough, I will do better next time."

Just my 2 cents.

[talo]

How could one not be a success?

By failure?

By who's definition?

[Jetta]

Success is attaining whatever goals you have set for yourself and finding new ones to work towards. It's having solid fulfilling relationship or marriage (generally you get along and are working towards similar goals in life and supporting each others goals). Happy, well-adjusted children. Active in the community through church, volunteering, or whatever brings you some personal satisfaction. Close friends, and good relationships with family members.

 

Good question. I'm a point in life where figuring out what would make me feel most successful is key. I love home ownership it's always been a goal of mine (which is why it's so hard to let go of). College is another goal and if it's the last thing on earth I do I will complete my degree. Being married and having 3 children was something I once wanted (2 boys and a girl). Becoming a mom was important to me, but I guess I thought I'd have more support in that respect and didn't realize how challenging it really was. Most of my goals I have attained yet that feeling of success is elusive. So perhaps success is more than achievement or maybe I was working towards goals that were drilled into me rather than what I truly wanted in life.

[gersanos]

I've heard people say that success to them is measured by the size of there paycheck, and to others if they are happy. I scoffed at both.

 

Sure, you can have a great fat checking account, but other areas in your life are a wreck. Professional success is only one factor to being a success in life in my opinion. The most lucrative professions have some of the most miserable people on the planet in them (tons of studies to back this up).

 

And happiness is pretty subjective. To some it's money, to others it's pleasure and that can come in the form of sex, drugs, alcohol, etc. Nothing wrong with any of that, but it's a problem when you have unprotected sex with random partners on a regular basis, or are strung out on dope or constantly hungover, or if nothing else matters to you but chasing those few extra dollars when you already have a pretty sizable income that is well above average.

 

I tend to view success on a cosmopolitan level. Success is striving for not perfection in all areas, but a solid progressive balance between all areas of your life. Usually everyone has there issues in certain areas. Perhaps that's a part of all of our strengths and weaknesses? You can have success in your professional life, academic life, social life, dating life, family life, marriage life, parental life, ad infinitum. I know as Americans we tend to view success as a good job, and a nice piece of property and a nice car. All of it signifying that that person made it. I think that's a very naive approach.

 

On the block where my parents live, we would all deduce that these people are success stories. Nice house, nice car, kids running around, good jobs, some have there own businesses, etc.

 

Well, take the golf store owner accross the street. Younger male, in his mid-thirties, with a nice house, a Cadillac, and beautiful kids. Well, the kids are raised by a day care, the wife and him divorced about 3 years ago after a stint of a few years, and every evening he can be found on his porch with a 12 pack of beer. The entire block, those who know him, know him as the alcoholic. If the kids are home you can here him yelling at them. But you would never guess this. He's a good looking guy, runs his own business, drives a Cadillac, has a nice 4 bedroom house, 2 kids that run around, but is absolutely miserable with himself.

 

It's just one story, and it may seem that that's just an outlier from the representative population. But, it's not. Not in the area that I am from (Chicago).

 

Or the straight A student who is socially inept and is solely dominated by a letter grade at the end of each semester to define who he or she is. Or my friend, well call him Charlie, who went to law school on a scholarship, passed the bar his first time around, but is a binge drinker, pot addict, and pain killer addict. I'll run into him from a time to time and he always asks if I have any prescriptions that I can give him. A beautiful mind yes. He's brilliant. But he cannot manage his own life. Gets home from the office after spending maybe a day at court, and is getting high at his friends house who is married with a child, and theyre playing cards and smoking pot a few feet away from the crib where the baby is sleeping.

 

Kind of scary to me.

 

But without failure, there can never be success. Failure is not a bad thing. I used to despise it. Now I welcome it (haha, but not exactly in open arms). I see failure as an opportunity to grow, and to be success in a certain area that needs improvement.

[darkblue]

To me, I'll know I'm successful when I don't 'want' anything else out of my life. When I'm finally satisfied with how everything is.

[Soulfully]

To me, success means to be, to live now. To be able to live in the now, to live and learn from every experience (positive & negative), to be able to look back, reflect, smile and say "it was worth it".

 

To be able to appreciate the constant change in everything in life, to encourage my personal evolution without forcing it... to flow in life. To be able to realise and accept my virtues and limitations. To accept myself to enable the changes that I consider necessary to unblock the natural flow of growth, evolution, life.

 

To allow myself to smile, laugh, cry... to allow myself to feel and think, and understand the battles between them.

Most importantly, to allow myself to be happy.

 

Love and happiness are found within, perhaps somewhere close to our hearts.

Why search outside for what we have within?

And aren't we denying happiness as we continue the supposedly "long-winding road towards everlasting happiness?"

Does everlasting happiness actually exist?

 

I wonder sometimes whether many of us actually have time for what we all seem to call happiness. Or perhaps, do we actually give ourselves the time and opportunity to feel happiness, even if its just for a moment? And why arent the motives of being alive, feeling alive... just being alive enough for us to feel a sense of peace and happiness, again, even if its just for a moment?

 

At the end of the day, everyone defines success and happiness in their own way. Everyone creates their own reality. None better or worst, none "truer" or "less real", just different... our personal reality. But sometimes, we tend to complicate things more than perhaps they really are, making our own lives harder than it actually is.

 

Just some food for thought.

Peace.

[Jetta]

Oh that was a good answer darkblue. Wow.

[easyguy]

What is success to you?

 

Landing a gig at the Village Vanguard in NYC with a full house.

 

Musical aspirations aside, success to me means being totally happy with yourself, materialistic or not. Spiritual enlightenment perhaps. Also, reaching your goals in life.

[BillyJean714]

Success to me, is when someone's at a place in their life where everything that they do makes them happy. Success for some people could mean that they work menial jobs, and as long as they have a nice house and family to come home to, then they're happy.

 

Success to me, isn't measured by a person's material wealth. Anyone who's rich could be very rich and very unhappy at the same time. I've seen some of the poorest of the poor happier than some of the richest of the rich.

 

Success also means being true to yourself. I know one person, who, he's quite financially successful, makes a living in the 6 digit range, but hell, he's unhappy. Basically, to me, he's not very successful. He's just living a life that his mother wanted for him, but he's not happy.

 

As for success for myself? Ideally, a medium sized house, in my hometown. A cute VW beetle, my own business, and working closely with the community. My biggest success is when I help someone, and by the end of the day, I know that somehow, I made a difference in someone's life. I also enjoy seeing other people smile, especially those who aren't as financially well off. It makes me really happy to see them smile. One moment of success for me is when I saw this group of ladies, who tried taking a picture with a disposable camera, and they couldn't speak English. I saw this little cute toddler around the age of 2, and I couldn't help it but to aks them if I could take a photo for them. Even after taking the photo, the kid remained smiling, bursted out, and said, "Thank You!" He was such a bundle of joy! So cute! I just won't ever forget that image in my mind. Success to me, is enjoying the simple thingss in life. That's what makes me really happy! It's not the big things that count. It's the little things that really put a smile on my face!

[Alabama]

Success to me is finding your own happiness and accepting it.

[nuts]

sometimes i comment to my mom on what i want to do for a job when i come out of university. she tells me that its not the best paying and that knowing me (because i come from a somewhat "privilaged" family) it better be well-payed in order for me to be happy. in her eyes it wouldnt allow be to be what she would define as successful.

 

to me, success is not the money you are making, maybe not even necessarily what you have or havent achieved in life. success is pure, untainted happiness. if i die a truly happy man then i would have been more of a success than i could have asked for.

[fantasia2004]

succcess is what you make of it, and how you choose to definwe it in your own terms....

[sugarandspice]

sucess.

 

i used to think sucess was getting the best grades in exams.

 

now i think sucess is discovereing who you are.