“Success if not final;  failure is not fatal:  it is the courage to continue that counts”.    – Winston Churchill

What is success?

In this blog I often talk about the word “success”.  Even the title of my blog “Your Journey to Success” is centered on achieving this concept. Because there has been such a focus on this word I thought it would be useful to identify what I mean when I talk about success.

First, I think it would be useful to list a couple of things that do not mean success. Making a certain amount of money, doing a certain type of job, or living a certain type of lifestyle are not indicators of success as I mean it.

Success is about two things- being happy and feeling fulfilled. What does it mean to be happy and fulfilled? This is a hard question to answer, because it would be different for everyone. The best that I can do is share some broad aspects that I believe are a part of being happy and fulfilled.  These are by no means the only things that determine the two, but I feel they are a good starting point. First, to be happy your needs need to be taken care of.  In reference to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, safety and physical security must be fulfilled before people can start thinking about the higher needs (such as happiness and fulfillment). In my own experience I know that it is a lot easier to be happy when you’re not worrying about your basic needs.  I am not suggesting that money brings happiness but having enough to provide for yourself is certainly important.

One thing that I feel is important to being fulfilled is you must be constantly challenged, and also given the resources that your need to overcome those challenges.  Take a puzzle for example, they are super fun to do for most people.  But they can’t be too hard because then it would just be frustrating. That being said, half of the fun of putting together a puzzle is working through the challenge and ending up with a complete, physical representation of your success. The sense of fulfillment that you feel at the end of solving a puzzle is that same sense that I feel it is important to feel at the end of the day at your job. Whatever your job looks like and whatever form those challenges come in, I feel it is important to look for a career that gives you that sense of fulfillment. It doesn’t matter what exactly you do, it only matters that it brings you these two things.

Too often people also assume that there are people in this world who are born to be successful and those who aren’t. We often think that success requires a certain personality type, background, or education level. I’m going to let you all in on a little secret though, literally every single person in this world can be successful.

If you look at any successful inventor or businessman, they always have the mindset that they are already successful.  It’s a combination of positivity and refusal to give up. They are willing to work and rise to the top wherever they are at.  They are not waiting for a certain event to happen or goal to be reached for them to be successful, they see all parts of their journey as part of the equation for their success.Success is not something that happens to us, it is something that we choose to achieve. Success is a mindset, and no matter how long or hard the road is to reach the point where we feel happy and fulfilled, if we have a mindset of success we will be successful throughout entire journey.  Winston Churchill once said, “Success if not final; failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts”.  Success is living in a way that is centered on achieving your dreams, whatever they may be.