What's Your Definition For Success?

Success will always be defined differently by different people, but let’s agree on what most people would regard as “success”.

Success IS:

• knowing you did a good job during your day and had positive interactions with the people you came into contact with
• looking forward to going home to your family and spending quality time with them
• knowing you have enough money to pay any current outstanding debts and any debts that might arise in the future
• knowing that you are at peace with yourself and your creator and that you know that you have somewhere to turn should something unexpected ever happen to turn you world upside down
• having the time to pursue and enjoy non-work related hobbies and interests

And Success is NOT:

• always putting your work ahead of your career
• slinking home and then hiding from your family because you’ve had a “hard day”
• making more money than you’ll ever need and then trying to figure out how to amass even more
• going to a service of worship and creating your “to-do” list during it
• burning the candle at both ends, and never having the energy to play full out or the time to fully relax

In short, success should not just be measured by financial success. Success is so much more than your corporate salary or job title. It’s about your quality of life and encapsulates your marriage, your family, your health, your home life (finances, etc.), your relationship with your creator. It’s about what you learn, what you get to enjoy and how you spend your valuable time during your life on earth not just what you achieve.

Being totally successful is inevitably a balancing act and will be different from one person to the next. The secret is to achieving what you determine to be success for you in conjunction with the people that you interact with in your life. A person cannot be considered totally successful if they climb the corporate ladder but at the expense of significant relationships. It isn’t “success” to earn a stack of money to retire with only to find that there is no family around to share and enjoy it with.

So is there just one formula for success? Almost certainly not, although the definition I personally like the best is provided in the words of Larry Chengges poem “Success”.

Success is doing the best you can,
In as many ways as you can.
It is being just and honest and true,
Not in a few things but in ...

...click here for the complete poem.

If you adopted this as your definition for success and managed to truly live up to it in all areas of your life I truly believe that at the end of your days you would be able to look back on a hugely successful life by anybody’s standards with absolutely no regrets and more than just a tinge of pride, knowing that you had done the very best that you could given the resources available to you and that no area of your life had suffered at the expense of any other.

Decide upon your definition of “success” so that you are able to be successful at whatever you ultimately choose or have chosen to do.

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