Success is all in Your Mind
“If a person thinks himself a success then he is a successful.â€
Until that person realizes that they are deluding themselves into believing whatever they think is true. There is no true definition of success. A man may think of himself as successful if he is able to steal a purse from an old lady and buy drugs. Is he truly a success?
In my opinion he is a failure because my definition is different from his. In his own mind he is successful because he got the money he needed to get high.
The definition of success from dictionary.com is:
suc·cess [suhk-ses] – noun
1. the favorable or prosperous termination of attempts or endeavors.
2. the attainment of wealth, position, honors, or the like.
3. a successful performance or achievement.
4. a person or thing that is successful.
Let’s break down the mugger’s mental picture. He needed money to buy drugs. He snatches an old lady’s purse and gets away with $93 in cash. He is able to buy his drug of choice. He hasn’t had that luxury for a while.
1. He achieved a prosperous outcome after his first attempt of stealing the lady’s purse.
2. He attained wealth
3. He achieved his goal – getting high
In his mind he was successful.
The mugger attained all the goals that he set out to achieve, but in my mind he can’t be a success. The reason he isn’t a success from my viewpoint is because he never took into account the accosted lady’s point of view. If he would be able to feel the traumatic anger from the bottom of her soul he may have never stolen her purse.
Let’s look at it from a less dramatic scenario. A man with a beard visits his local grocery store and buys his food for the week. They give him six plastic bags, so he can carry his groceries out to his car. Those six plastic bags will be put in the trash and only add to the 95 million tons of annual plastic bag waste. He is adding to the trash pollution that will only continue to get worse. He accomplished his goal of buying food for his wife and himself, but he’s hurting the earth in the process. He is successful from his vantage point and he’s unsuccessful in many environmentalists’ eyes.
There is no way to be completely successful because there is always a negative to any action. So if there isn’t a way to judge success – what does one do to measure their life?
I believe you can’t measure your success. There isn’t a way to systematically put value on feelings. I know that we do this everyday when we buy food, a computer, or a diamond ring. When we spend our money we measure the value of that item against the value of keeping our money. We may part with our $10 to buy a meal because that meal is worth more to us than the $10; otherwise we wouldn’t part with our money. The next day our $10 might mean more to us than the food that we could buy. Everything fluctuates constantly. There is no way to judge whether that moment of parting with money was a good decision because it switches and flips and spins and morphs. I bought my house last year and I think it was a great choice, very successful. I’m looking at the angles that I want to see. I’m looking at all the great memories of spending time with my wife, neighbors and friends, but I can’t see what would have happened if I would have never made that choice and I accept that.
Judging yourself as being successful or unsuccessful usually requires comparing yourself against your co-workers and friends. All this does is create a mental wall between you and the people around you. By letting go of an old definition of success, you can then learn to appreciate the present moment for all it’s worth – from the air you breathe to the time you spend with the people you love.
We all have a different definition of success. If you make good money at a job you enjoy, then I would say you’re successful. If you have a beautiful spouse that loves you, then you are successful. If you can buy groceries for your family, I think you’re successful. I would also say you are successful if you are able to take a large breath in and look up into the sky and smile. If everything is successful and never measured or compared, then you are ahead of the game your mind loves to play - judging.
When you judge your life then you are looking for the positive or negative in your situation. The problem is that your image of success varies, depending on your mood and state of mind. If you are in a bad state you’ll see the ugly side of your life. Your emotions dictate your level of enjoyment. Letting go of your emotions and thoughts and seeing the true state of your life is difficult. However as long as you are alive, then happiness exists in any circumstance when you choose to see it.
