The Success Conundrum

Hello readers, hope you are doing good. 

Source: Medium

Today, we take on the topic of success. All of us study for many years, work hard day and night, all of that to achieve one thing, “SUCCESS”. But the idea of success is very vague and differs drastically from individual to individual. So, we intend to discuss the various ideas behind success and try to solve the conundrum that exists.

Introduction

Source: Success

What is success?

Here’s how Google defines success- “the accomplishment of an aim or purpose.”

Hmm, seems pretty accurate right? I mean, of course, it’s Google.

But here is where things become unclear. What exactly is an “aim” or a “purpose”?

Well, I mean, an aim can be becoming the next Bill Gates or robbing a bank one day. Both, when achieved, will result in you having lots of money and can be termed as “success”, but the consequences of it differ a lot.

Therefore, we need to understand what our aim should be for achieving that success. Before we discuss that, let us explore why do we need success in the first place.

Why do we need success?

To answer in short, success brings joy and satisfaction in life (again, debatable depending on what your aim is).

Success heavily impacts how we see ourselves and how others see us. We all have seen this throughout our lives. The teacher likes the topper more than an average student, your boss values those employees who achieve those targets, we all remember the winner of a race and rarely recall the other participants.

So, for obvious reasons, success boosts your self-confidence as you get positive validation from other people. So, it's like a loop where this validation helps you ensure that you are on the right path and this assurance becomes your motivation to keep going.
Moreover, success also enhances your image in the minds of other people, who then respect you more and provide you with more opportunities.

Conversely, the lack of success does just the opposite. It diminishes a person’s self-confidence and self-respect. This also affects his efforts in other unrelated endeavors.

And since lack of success is viewed negatively in our society, it results in the deterioration of one’s image in the eyes of other people and hence lack of respect and opportunities.

Therefore, success is a need for human beings.

The spectrum of success

Now, let’s jump into the spectrum of success. Here, I am going to discuss the two extremes of success that most of the people consider and thereby help you find out where should your aim for success lie.
1. Measurable Outcomes

Source: Pinterest

OK, so the first end that we will discuss is the one that’s the most popular and is often viewed as the “goal” for success. This is the one which we all traditionally understand success as. It’s the one which involves wanting to be in the Forbes’ list of 100 richest people or wanting to be the cover of the Cosmopolitan magazine.

This end of the spectrum involves measuring success by measurable parameters like amount of money, number of followers, number of cars etc.

This is the success that all those online business and self-help gurus preach about. This is the type of success that we talk about and dream about. This is what marketing people everywhere are trying to sell.

How it is sold to us is by things like “becoming financially free by your 40s” or “You will be able to buy that car you always dreamt about”. This is what the overly-hyped-among-youngsters: the “hustle” culture is ultimately about. This is the dream for which many people work, day and night.

You see how widespread this end is. Ok, so what’s the problem with it?

Though the overall idea is completely justified, the extent of it is what’s concerning.

The problem isn’t with the idea of “financial freedom” or “being able to buy anything”, the problem is with it’s marketing. All the big brands and business gurus sell it as the “ultimate success”. They sell it as if that’s the only thing that’s missing from your life, that “Gucci bag” is the only thing keeping you from feeling “successful” and being happy.

And as we will see, and many of you already know, it’s not completely true. Yes, you need money to survive, yes you need fame to an extent (especially if your career depends on it). It’s completely true that you cannot feel happy when you are wearing torn clothes or don’t have enough food to feed you or you cannot buy the basic necessities of life. But that’s where the need for it ends. That is where the limit to all of this should lie. Everything above that is unnecessary.

I am not endorsing the “minimalist lifestyle”, but just trying to define the necessary extent of those things. Everything that you choose above it is completely up to you and should be your conscious choice. 

Again, this is just the one end of the spectrum. It shouldn’t be considered as the “ultimate goal” for success.

2. Unmeasurable Outcomes

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Now we come to the other end. This is something everyone knows of, but no one considers it in the realm of success. But it does fit in the definition of success and hence it exists.

This spectrum involves activities like helping others, spending time with your family and friends, meditating, travelling etc. These are the activities whose outcomes cannot be measured directly and so it’s usually ignored by most of us. But, since these activities also have a definitive aim and make us happy, they should be considered in the spectrum of success.

Ok, answer this question: Are people like Mother Teresa, Dalai Lama, Mahatma Gandhi considered successful?

You might say yes. You know, they achieved the goal that they set for themselves and hence were “successful” in their endeavors.

But the underlying question is: Will they fit in how success is viewed in today’s age? They didn’t earn big chunks of money. They weren’t financially free. They didn’t have a wonderful house of their own and never went travelling to exotic locations.

This is the difference. What they chose was the other end of success. They chose the happiness and satisfaction that is obtained by helping others or the mental peace obtained by meditating. These are intangible outcomes; they seem vague and hence not considered in today’s realm of success.

Note: Many of these influential people might have ended up with lots of money or fame, but that wasn’t their ultimate goal. That wasn’t their “aim” for success. They based their aim on those unmeasurable parameters and hence lie in this part of the spectrum of success

Conclusion

So, on one end, we have this entire “hustle culture”, work hard so that you can own a Ferrari one day, where people like Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos or Mukesh Ambani are considered the epitomes of success and what everyone looks forward to becoming one day.

And on the other end, we have people like Mother Teresa, who spend their entire lives helping others, a “different” kind of success, so to say. We have monks who spend their lives achieving mental peace, that “higher state of mind and soul”. We have Mahatma Gandhi who spent most of his adult life trying to free people from oppression. We have mountaineers like Tabei Junko, the first woman to climb Mount Everest and eventually climbing the highest peak of every continent.

So, the question arises, which end do we choose?

Though the ultimate answer is up to you and should be your choice, we are going to discuss our view of success which lies in between the two extremes.

We don’t always need to pick one of the extremes. We don’t need to pick either black or white, because usually, the best solution lies in the grey area in between.

So how we view it is, sure, on one end you need to work hard in your career, you need to earn money to survive on this planet. You need followers and fame to be gifted further opportunities of growth in life. But it shouldn’t be at the expense of your mental and physical health.

It’s like a weight balance. You need to allocate appropriate amount of time and energy to both the ends of the spectrum in order to prevent the balance from tipping over. This is how a balance, an equilibrium is achieved in life where you have the money to travel but you also have the physical health needed to travel. You have an expensive car but you also have family and friends with whom you can go on long drives.

These things are always easier said than done, but we feel realizing the need for this balance helps since you can then try to consciously regulate your work and your exercise or other leisure activities, thereby achieving that balance in life. 

We see many people like Ratan Tata, Bill Gates,Warren Buffet etc. trying to achieve this balance. To balance their measurable outcomes, they do activities like meditation and charity to maintain the balance because that balance helps them not only sustain their status and position in the society, but also helps them achieve mental peace and go to sleep like a baby.

Ultimately, the success achieved by this aim will not be very fancy but it sure won’t be empty. This success will give you the sense of satisfaction and true happiness people work their entire lives for.

Written and Edited by: Yash Jayesh Doshi