Measure of Success

When you have an inspired audience with applause and standing ovation does that make you successful?

If you are the best student with all the glorified academic and other achievements are you successful?

Does being a wealthy entrepreneur make you truly successful?

If so… Yes, you are successful according to the social norms. You will be the ultimate icon of success. But does that really symbolize that you are happy?

If you are happy it does mean that you are successful. But even if you are successful it doesn’t always justify that you are happy. Yes, I do agree that if you are unsuccessful that will anyways make you unhappy. But the fact that success leads to happiness is not entirely true. The inability to separately understand Happiness and Success leads to agony and pain leading to unfortunate situations, conveying us the importance of understanding this small but crucial phenomena.

“Happiness” is the best feeling that you can embrace, the feeling of pleasure, joy and contentment will always make you successful from within, but not always according to the social eye. The social norms have different interpretations of success, different criteria of success. The amount of wealth, power, the numbers of trophies medals…… the list is quite exhausting. It will be a never ending list with our unwanted needs and wants.

“But if you bury your self in these norms you will blindly fall into a never ending loop, where you will cross off one achievement after the other in the idiotic success list which society has generated, eventually leading to a complicated life of competition, rivalry, greed… “

So just think… why are you working like a puppet achieving the idiotic list set by everyone else. Instead, why not design your own list. Why not define your own list? which takes in to account your happiness, your core beliefs and feelings. The list that society has set for us doesn’t consider any of these. Your happiness is the key!

When I look back at achievements which led to trophies, awards recognition… most of those physical trophies, medals are lost or rusted and the recognition forgotten. The only jewels I have left of those are the happy memories with my friends within the period trying to achieve them. Even if we weren’t successful then, still we would have had those happy memories to cherish.

**“This does make it clear that Success & Happiness, yes they do overlap but they are totally independent of each other.” **

So I urge you to take some time for your self to think. What does it really make me happy? What is the ultimate happiness I’m seeking for in life? Define your happiness your self and then setup your own list to achieve that happiness. But make sure that you don’t loose your way in the list, because success to my belief is only a small portion within Happiness. Sometimes happiness rest within something really small which we fail to identify, or too late crossing of goals in the list of success we set.

Make Happiness the measure of Success.