What is Success?

Recently, I was looking for an image to represent the concept of success so I went to the Internet to search and to my amazement what I saw challenged my view of the word.

As I usually do when I’m challenged, I began to think. For weeks, I pondered over the word success and asked myself what it meant to me. At what point do I call myself successful? Who do I see as successful? What do those successful people think of themselves? I mostly chewed on this, mused over it and turned it around in my brain.

The images I’d seen when I went to www.morguefile.com, where I sometimes download free photos for my work, indeed got me thinking. When I searched for the word success I got pages upon pages of mostly bank buildings and cash (dollar bills and coins). Granted, this website is not as widely sourced as Google is, but there is still a great number of people from all around the world who have posted images here. Does this imply that the meaning of success to this wide array of people is mainly about money?

I’d like to ask you what you think about success? Do you describe success in relation to finances or not. Have you made a decision about the point at which you will feel comfortable describing yourself as successful? What are the things that make you feel successful?

When I was thinking up names of people, I consider successful, two names that came to mind were Mother Theresa and Malala Yousafzai. In my mind they are successful woman. But as I thought of it, I also acknowledge that they didn’t have much money. I know money is important, don’t get me wrong. There’s a lot of things I could do with money.

So what really is success? Does it have to be based on or around money? My personal conclusion is good success is knowing to do the right thing and doing it. In my opinion, there is also bad success, which is more about notoriety. This is when someone goes so much against the grain that they become famous. Everyone gets to know them, not because of the good they do, but because of their ability to shock the senses and get attention.

So what do you think success is? I’d love to hear what you’ve got to say about the subject. Leave a comment below.

Thanks for reading.