An attempt to understand success

During my internship (while I was doing M.B.A) we had a quick tea-time chat on it which was certainly not ‘success’ful as we had to cut the conversation mid-way (I was sincere to my work that time too). But reading Christina’s thought provoking post, I have got the opportunity to take it further. Of course I do not aim to conclude this subjective matter, I am just putting my thoughts here.

If Christina doesn’t mind, I found her thoughts on success contradictory at places. On one hand – success is compared with the economics’ law of ‘diminishing marginal utility’ which means more u have something the lesser u want it, if I m not wrong. Contradicting it is her opinion on success as a journey and not a one time affair. If I am successful today, I would definitely want to achieve success, greater one, in my future endeavors. Success makes you confident, aspirant, and greedy for success and so do people’s expectations from you go up. Retaining a successful position is much more difficult than achieving it.

Coming back to where we had stopped some 20 months back, what does success mean to people? An instant answer would be achieving what one wants defines success. It could be money, high rank position at workplace, captainship of the college sports team, achieving best student award, winning the cookery contest, or simply earning a living…. or anything u value. I reiterate, anything u value. To me success is achieving what I value (materialistic or non-materialistic). I liked the comments posted by Deepti and Ullas, it relates to what I am trying to put forth.

Most of us are not clear on what we want from life. Money and power have been supposedly synonymous to success since ages. There will hardly be anyone in this racing world who see our father – Gandhi Bapu as a role model. We are just following the herd, running blindly after materialistic gains to show off our ‘success’. Is that because we have realized that the world bows down to the ‘successful’ people no matter what they do and how they have achieved the grandeur. If we think the poor are unsuccessful, we are wrong. They are equally successful – they tend their family as we do, they enjoy their festivals as we do, they contribute to the society and the nation as we do. The point here is how you take what you have. Satisfaction is also an important key to an individual’s success. See your world with your eyes and not with others’, and you will realize you have got much more than what the ‘successful’ has.