What do you Mean by Success?

Success means a lot of different things to different people. Even the same person may see success as the achievement of different goals in different areas of life. To a large degree, our notion of "success" is shaped by the values of our society or community.

When we say of someone that he or she is a successful person, normally we attach to that ascription the accumulation of a certain amount of wealth or status. Likely we link the concept with some kind of achievement or award. Synonymous to success are notions about winning and conquest. Thus, a successful business organization would be one that has a certain degree of market share and a successful athlete would be an individual who has excelled competitively. When it comes to personal successes, perhaps acclaim and acknowledgement among peers would be important.

Often, we deem someone to be successful only if that individual has attained some recognizable achievement. For instance, the Buffalo Bills will forever be enshrined as a team that failed to win a single Super Bowl in four consecutive attempts. More recently, there was some small debate that arose among some section of the American public and media about Michelle Kwan’s success or lack thereof for having to retire from competitive figure skating without ever having won a single Olympic title. Apparently it does not matter that the Bills won four consecutive AFC Championships, a feat that no other team has ever done before, or that Kwan was a five time World champion and nine time National title holder. In the minds of some people, you are not a success unless you have reached a specific goal or achievement.

Public success is quite different from private success. There might be at least two levels of private success. One viewed introspectively by the individual himself or herself, and another as a general perspective on private or personal achievement. For instance, we might describe someone who displays strong character and evidences of great self control, discipline and a high degree of achievement in his or her private life, and think of this person as privately successful, but the individual himself or herself, who has a completely different set of standards in judging his or her life might think otherwise.

In thinking about success, how much does ethical or moral success figure in to our concept of success as a society, and what does that tell us about that society? We started off by saying our notions of success is intimately related to our value system. So, how important is it for us as a society to aim for enduring values – ethical and moral virtues, that go beyond the temporal and passing glory that comes with winning or achievement of this or that goal?

So, what is our definition of success today? What do we mean when we say of a person that he or she is a successful person?

What is your definition of success? Is it similar or different than what the general public think of success?

Are you a success? Why or why not?