How do you measure success? Different people have different definitions of success, and different means of measuring it.
I have 2 friends who keep asking me “have you made your first million dollars yet?”. I always reply to them: “It was never my goal to make a million dollars”. These people, along with many others, measure success by how much money you have… and I feel bad for them. You could be the richest person in the world materialistically, but your life could be a mess, you could be disliked, or you could still be unhappy… so that doesn’t make you successful in my book.
I used to think that success is measured by happiness… meaning if you’re happy in life, then you’re successful. Then one day, I wasn’t happy anymore. I asked myself; does that mean that I’m not successful? No, I still considered myself successful, and I realized that my definition of success was incomplete. This led me to seek a better definition.
I opened up the topic with my family members and asked my sister, who happens to be a certified life coach, “how can someone tell if they’re successful?”. She replied, “successful at what?”. That was all I needed to hear to come to a revelation:
- Success isn’t absolute.
- Success is relative.
Here’s what you also need to know:
- Nobody can be successful at everything. When asking about success, you have to relate it to a certain topic and ask, “am I successful at X?”.
- Success is relative to a certain period of time. You can’t be successful all the time or forever. For example, in football, Brazil was successful in winning the World Cup for several years, but then they were no longer successful at that. So if you were to ask, change your question to “am I currently successful at X?”.
- Success is relative to a benchmark or goal that you set. If your goal was to win a boxing championship and you won it, it means that you were successful at boxing during that timeframe.
So next time you try measuring success or asking yourself “am I successful?”, ask the question the right way, or don’t ask it at all.
If you’re asking this question because you’re feeling insecure or need validation, I can tell you this: you’re alive… so you’re successful at living and at life. If you’ve set goals and achieved them, you were successful at whatever you wanted to achieve. Don’t compare yourself to others… you’re not them and they’re not you. Your lives, circumstances, connections, and environments are different, so it’s not fair to compare. Don’t let anyone else’s accomplishments or questions make you doubt your own success.
Set goals, and try to achieve them… or don’t! There’s no “right” and “wrong” way to live life. Life is not a race. Just look for things and ways to enjoy it while you’re here. Whether it’s regarding success or anything else, let’s not care about labels, definitions and other people’s opinions. Cheers.
