Success And It’s Basic Philosophy
Success makes you feel proud. A successful person tends to feel like everyone is happy and that everything is okay. Success is delicious as it gives you positive vibes and fills you with ecstatic energy.
Image from pixabay
What Is Success?
What does success really mean? The answer to this question varies from person to person. That’s why only you can answer this question correctly for your own self. Achieving your idea of success obviously depends on what you want in life. Different people want different things during different stages of their life. Below are a few factors that affect or influence our wants.
Age
William Shakespeare, an English philosopher, explains this logic in the “Seven Stages Of Men” poem. In the poem, he illustrates how we humans wish for different things in different stages of our lives. During our younger years, we are merely concerned with fun. Then the next stage takes our attention towards love. As we grow up, we start focusing on fame and money, and lastly, during our old age, we begin to see everything with wisdom.
Situations
The second most powerful defining force of success is our situations. It can be financial situations, like, if you are struggling for basic needs, you might only think of money. And it can be your health situation, where no matter how much money you have, you just want to be healthy again. If you are settled financially and are also healthy, then you might be looking for fun. And if you had enough fun already and got some money too, then you might be thinking about getting fame and so on.
Environment
We are humans. And we can’t ignore the fact that we get influenced by the people around us. If you are from India, you might want to become a movie star or a cricket player because a lot of people pursue these careers there. And if you are in Brazil, you may like to play football. Similarly, in some families, everyone is a doctor, actor, or engineer. A lot of the time, we tend to want certain things, just because it’s trending and someone else has achieved it.
If we consider the media or the internet as our environment, then it means our environment is not just our city or country but the whole world. That’s why we say that the world is becoming a global village. So yes, the environment or people around us do influence our choices.
Nature
We accept William Shakespeare’s philosophy and understand that situations and our environment influence our choices. But people still behave differently because of their nature. Are you a sensitive person? Do you really care about things happening in your surroundings, in your country, or even in the world? Greta Thunberg, a Swedish teenager environmentalist, and activist, Gandhi and Nelson Mandela are few examples that support our argument about how the nature of a person can be even more dominant than the environment, situation, or age. You may want something really badly, but for the other person, the same thing may not be that much valuable.
Position or Status
Are you the head of a state or company or father or mother of kids or a partner or a friend of a person? Things like these also control your choices. On the one hand, you expect respect, care, and love, and on other hand, you care about your role. In all such cases, your responsibilities and expectations are actually defining your success.
Belief
If you are a religious or a spiritual person your concept of success might be different from others. Your definition of right and wrong are probably different and thus you may satisfy when you do those things which you think are right.
Awareness or Knowledge
How much do you know about this world? The internet has changed everything for the human race. Even the average person is much more aware and knowledgeable about the happenings in the world. Education, traveling, etc are also things that have broadened people’s spectrum of knowledge and awareness. Your awareness will make you think more and probably demand more from you to do, to achieve, and to grow in life.
How To Get Success?
Given that there are so many variables and factors that determine our success, it can be quite hard to answer this question. Again, the answer will vary from one person to another. However, broadly speaking, we can talk about a few things that could apply to most people.
Be Aware
What you want in life depends on who you are. Plain and simple.
So, you need to be absolutely aware of who you are as a person and the various roles you play in society. Based on your responsibilities and status, are you a student or a father, or head of a company? What are you expecting from yourself and what are others expecting from you? And what is the demand of your status from you?
Be aware of your financial and health situations. Be aware of your nature. Do you know your interests, your talents, your potential, and your weaknesses? How do you respond to a good, bad or tough situation?
How much do you know about the world? And how much do you get influenced by the people and things happening around you?
Are you aware of your choices, and do you know your goals, your targets? What is wrong or right in your point of view? What is your age? And what are your responsibilities during this stage of life?
Such questions seem hard to answer and frankly, some of them require lifelong effort to understand. But the more you are clear about yourself, the easier it would be to understand your wants. Spend some alone time with yourself or ask your close friends, mentor, life coach, or psychiatrist to help you understand who you are. Understanding yourself is the key to that door that opens to all the things that you want.
Be Aware Of What You Need To Do
When you are conscious of yourself and everything around you, then it’s easy to get clarity. You will realize that you might need to value certain things more than you thought and you might have to give up on certain other things because they may not be right for you. Ask yourself what is urgent to you at this stage of your life? Figure out the hierarchy of importance by asking yourself what is more important and what is less important to you.
Your life is all about your situation, your responsibilities, and your nature. No one can live anyone’s life because everyone has got everything different. You might need to perform on your stage according to your own script.
Another thing you need to see is whether you are trying to act on someone else’s script. If so, ask yourself if you can write your own script. That’s your to-do list actually. Be aware of what you need to do at tall times.
Value Your Time
Now that you know what and why you may want something, it’s time to add the variable of time to the equation. Make and segregate lists of your to-do things sorted by one day, one month, one year, 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, and so on.
When is the right time to learn a certain skill? When is the right time to work hard? When is the right time to take care of your hobbies and entertainment? And so on. You can surely do anything whenever you want but sometimes, it really makes sense to act at the right time. You might need to prioritize those things which are urgent and important during a specific time.
You might want to delay something which you really want because it’s not the right time for it. And this priority or delaying certain things is based on your situations, responsibilities, status, and position. Sometimes you might follow your wish to do certain things and some other time, you might need to be a little hard on yourself.
Balancing this part of life seems hard but being aware of yourself makes things easy. Successful people value their time. It doesn’t mean they don’t enjoy life. They do enjoy life, but they do it the right way, to the right amount, and at the right time.
Be Proud
Let’s try to understand it this way – According to William Shakespeare, this world is a stage and we humans are mere performers. Everyone is acting according to their role. Some people are enjoying themselves by playing sports, while others are enjoying by watching them playing. The problem starts when someone in the audience begins to think, “When is my turn to play,” instead of simply enjoying the experience of watching.
Are you a mother and taking care of your kid? Bravo! You must be proud of yourself. Are you a teacher and doing your duty? Amazing! You should feel proud. Are you an actor or a singer or a farmer or a doctor or a student or a cook or a driver? No matter what role you’re playing, you should really be proud of it.
Embrace your role and accept your status. Be proud of what you choose, be proud of who you are, be proud of what you got, and enjoy the role of other performers.
Set Healthy Limits
Let’s do an experiment. Write down your normal weekly activities including your sleep, shower, brushing teeth, cooking, eating, your time with family and friends, exercise or walk, your time on social media or internet browsing, and your time at work.
Next week tell yourself that you will make sure to do these things. By the end of the next week, when you see that you have done all those things that you had planned, you will feel relaxed. But if you don’t get this feeling, it means that you want something more from yourself. You can write such things for the whole of next month or year and then try to see if you could follow your list. There is a maximum chance that you might disappoint your-self.
Why?
Because we often ask more of ourselves than we can actually do.
We are humans, not robots. We need all such things as we mentioned above and if we don’t care about such things, we can’t operate successfully anyway.
How do you feel when someone expects from you more than you can do? That’s what most people are actually doing to themselves. We don’t just expect but literally demand from ourselves those things which are not in our wheelhouse.
Set those things as your goals which you are already doing. This will bring calmness to your mind.
Measure your progress according to your own potential. Set healthy limits in your mind. In reality, your 24-hour schedule might already be enough to meet your targets.
Be Tough
Being aware of yourself and keeping your eyes on your to-do list from time to time seems enough for anyone who seeks success. But are people who achieve everything they had wished for successful? Probably not! A princess might feel unsuccessful and a poor person might feel happy. Why and how?
You see, success is not just statistics or numbers of wins, achievements, or happy moments in life. It’s actually the approach of a person towards life. Life doesn’t happen in one week, month, or even a year. It has thousands of days and nights and perhaps the same number of events.
One day you might fail to do something. Then, it’ll be up to you how you view that failure. You could tell yourself that you failed. Or, you could tell yourself that you didn’t fail. It was the event or the job that failed. If you succeed to adopt the latter mentality, you will learn from events to events and time to time. Not only about the job you were trying to do but you will understand yourself too. You will understand your feelings and responses to events. By doing so, you will feel proud because there is nothing wrong with learning and understanding yourself.
This is the attitude of tough people towards every failure. Failure is bound to come in life. No human has ever lived in this world without falling on certain days or events; the question is how do you respond to it? And how do you respond to yourself in the time of failure? Some people get demoralized with failure because they judge themselves instead of learning from it.
Failure is not a lack of success. But getting demoralized because of failure is a failure.
Successful people consider failure as an opportunity to learn more and grow more but that’s only possible when you are tough. Tough people laugh and smile in both good and bad times. That’s why it’s easy for them to fight in a bad time and change it into success.
Work For Statistics And Live With Philosophy
We are living in the 21st century. And we have achieved literal wonders. But despite all the progress we have made, we humans have never felt as deprived as we do now. Why is that? How can we feel less in the most modern era of human history?
Let’s try to understand this with the help of a hypothetical story.
Once upon a time, a man found a treasure. The treasure was in tons. According to the rules of the state, he had to inform the King, and then the King would give 10% of the total amount of treasure to him. And so, he informed the King. The King then sent some experts to gather information about the treasure and the person who found it. Since the treasure was a really large one, they could only see the tip of it and it was hard to know where the other end was. The experts asked him to take as much as he could for the entirety of the week. Hearing this, the man became very happy and began to take out the treasure. He toiled nonstop, day and night, without giving any thought to his energy. He would hardly eat and drink water while working. The man took out a lot of treasure in a few days but he died because of hard work before the end of the week.
What do you think the man should have actually done?
The obvious answer is that he should have taken care of his rest, food, and everything else necessary for his sustenance. But do you think it was possible for him to sleep after listening to the good news that he could collect as much treasure as possible for the entire week? He probably thought that he would have to work hard for just one week and then, he could enjoy the rest of his life without worry. Perhaps the experts understood him too and that’s why they give him the open option.
How is this relevant to us? Well, we all do have open options the entire world in the form of treasure and instead of a week we all have the whole life to hunt this treasure.
So, the reason for us feeling deprived is not fewer achievements or a lack of options. It’s because we keep wanting more from this treasure. We forget the fact that success is a feeling, it’s a state of mind. There are several ways to get this feeling but the most efficient way to feel successful is to want less.
You can get a feeling of success by achieving those things for which you are striving and you can get this feeling by looking at all the things that you already have.
The Bottom Line
Most people believe that a treasure is the only wealth but the truth is that you and your life are also your treasure. The treasure man didn’t die because of greed. He died because he was not aware of the later two treasures.
You see, we mostly believe that success is more about number game and statistics but if you think a little hard you will realize that this kind of philosophical or spiritual way of looking at success and life also helps a lot.
If treasure man knew this philosophy he would probably tell the experts
“Do your job take out all the treasure yourself and give me my 10% share” 🙂
