Have you ever thought what does the popular term “success” mean for you personally? By what criteria or features we can determine what is success? Many people simply aspire to it, while not realizing the depth of the meaning of this word.
According to the dictionary, success is an achievement of the intended purpose (Cambridge Dictionary). In general, I agree with this statement, but I would like to interpret it wider.
Wishing to achieve success in life, a lot of people perceive it as a phenomenon which does not require an explanation. Someone uses the templates and imagines that “success in life is always popularity, universal acceptance, love and wealth.” And his imagination draws a big house on the seashore with luxurious furnishings, the walls of which are entirely covered with various awards and magazine covers with the face of the same person he sees every time he looks in the mirror.
If we talk about success, implying financial heights, there is no doubt that the person, who reached the career growth and high financial level, is considered to be successful. A person is successful in terms of making money. If it takes a high social position, then, of course, he is successful here, too. But this does not give us the answer to the question what is success in a general sense and who is a successful person. In addition to the successful making money and high social status, there are other facets, which all together make up the concept of the universal global success. It often happens that a fully successful in financial terms and in terms of the environment and public morality individual is deeply unhappy in his personal life. Therefore, we are interested in a more capacious and holistic definition of this term, because success can be in absolutely different spheres of life.
I believe that success can manifest itself in:
• Acquiring some skill: driving, learning a foreign language, learning how to cook (even if this seems simple, it does not mean that for someone this is not a real purpose and its implementation will not be a success).
• Psychological success - similar to the above mentioned, but refers to a person's identity: to become kinder, more industrious, to overcome a bad habit (in practice - very few people will appreciate if you suddenly stop drinking, but this kind of success is probably the most time-consuming and sometimes not possible, but it is dominant and sometimes required for all other types of success).
• Career success - career growth.
• Positivism - a positive impression of life. Such a person did not decide anything special in his life – he is just happier than others having no particular reason.
• Personal success – family, love.
It should also be understood that each individual has his own, individual and unique perception of the world. First of all, the vision of the concept of success by a person depends on a huge number of his personal characteristics. This could include both the character as a whole and some of its components individually, for example, ambitiousness, emotionality, temperament and others. And that is why, for someone it is enough to have a title of the best master-inventor in the native quarter, as for someone having the Nobel Prize is not enough. Someone is happy that he is loved and his wife and two children wait for him at home, and someone is passionately seeking for love of people of both hemispheres of the planet. For someone, a loaf of bread is the most precious and desirable thing, but for someone a million is not considered to be money. For one person, success is the ability to put some gold furniture at home, for the other it is the opportunity to help other people and to feel himself needed.
Maybe it is necessary to think and determine the true and full meaning of this word to each person independently. Just stop for a moment, leave for a while the frantic cycle of the modern life and think, what you are seeking for? Which recognition do you need? What attitude do you crave? Which wealth would you like to have? What does the concept of success mean for you personally? Do it right now and you will get an accurate compass that will pave the right course for you to swim in the sea of life. It will guide you through all the storms, will help you to maintain the firmness and confidence in any situation, and finally will bring you to your cherished bay, the name of which is a “dream”.
Works Cited
Cambridge Dictionary. “Success Definition in the Cambridge English Dictionary”. Dictionary.cambridge.org. N.d. Web. 27 July 2016
