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Photo by Ulrich Thumult, licensed under Creative Commons.

Success is a term that is thrown around a lot in both the career and personal development/productivity circles.

Usually it seems to be portrayed as this ideal end state, at which we can all take a deep breath and survey our success with a vague sense of contentment and accomplishment.

While I must admit, I love the imagery this creates (for me, standing out looking over a vineyard from the portico of my country villa on a warm summer’s evening, not sure why), I don’t think it’s really all that accurate, and is more of a myth than anything else.

Why is this ideal of success a myth?

Success is personal

Success of reveryone is a very personal thing. Some people want to CEO’s, others want to devote their lives to their families, many people may fall somewhere in between or want both. Many writers seem to overlook this and write of their own view of success, sometimes unintentionally. While this success is true for them, it is important to note that their writings also need to be viewed from this perspective. If that perspective doesn’t necessarily math yours, you need to adjust what you take from the article accordingly.

Success is not the end

Many goals, including the ideal of “success”, are seen as endings.

Success may bring you to the end of one path you’ve taken on your journey, or allow you to close the cover on that chapter of your story.

But what success really does is reveal new paths, or give you more paper for the writing of your story.

From the heights of each success, we don’t turn around and look at what we’ve crossed. Or rather we don’t only turn around and look back.

Rather, from the new viewpoint we’ve reached, we can suddenly see new vistas, new paths, and new heights to strive for.

Success doesn’t have to be huge

Success can be found in the things we do each and every day. If we’ve taken a step towards our goals, then we have found success.

If we haven’t moved towards our goals, provided we recognize the fact that we’re not moving in the right direction to make changes in what we’re doing, we’ve still found success.

I know some of you are probably thinking that hey, here’s a Gen Y who used to get trophies and medals for everything they ever did, so of course they think there’s success in everything. Well, I’ll say that the trophy for abosolutely everything trend seemed to start a few years after I was going through things, so that’s point one, and point two, that’s not the point I was making anyhow.

The point is, provided you learn something that helps you move towards your goal, that isn’t failure. The only failure is not learning from your “mistakes”.

So is success always a myth? Definitely not. But we do need to take it off it’s pedestal and make it real. We do this by making successes personal, by looking forward from each perch, and by seeing successes for what they are.

I’ll be posting more on this topic over the next while, but in the meantime, please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments!

Cheers,

Adam

Posted on June 12th, 2008 under General, Special • Tags: perspective, success. •  Print This Post •  Email This Post • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback