We’re bombarded daily with television, ads, newspapers articles and random strangers telling us what to do and think. Our sense of worth has been forced to be defined by the job we do or the assets we own. We sometimes make the wrong choices both in our personal lives and in our financial lives because of the definition of success that society imposes upon us. The blind pressure of the crowd is so strong that we drown unknowing under its burden.
How many of us are struggling right now because we were brainwashed into reaching for an “American dream” that didn’t make sense for us. Many others are struggling with depression because of circumstances beyond our control and we have not found a job for two years. We’re told that we’re not good enough or too qualified (as in we don’t want you). A job equaled success in our society.
Family by Occhiovivo
I believe that to be truly successful, you need to forge your own path and write your own definition of success.
I have had many definitions of success. I thought success was winning a slot in a ballet company when I was younger. Success to me then was not about being the prima ballerina. I just wanted to dance and would have been ecstatic to simply have the opportunity to dance. As life pushed me down other paths, I changed my definition to being the CEO of a regional bank conglomerate. Then I got knocked on the side of the head, and success became making it through the day, five minutes at a time. I prayed for support and just celebrate each tiny success. They may have been tiny to others but they were huge to me.
And now, for many years, success has been looking at myself. Not for any accomplishments but for one simple question. Am I someone that I would like? That has helped guided me through many challenges and kept me focused. No matter what surrounds me, am I a person that I can respect. In looking inward, I freed myself from guilt and from the need for approval. It has changed my life. For all I know, I might define success differently in the future.
I would like to challenge you to define success. Make us think. Turn our world and perspectives upside down. There is no wrong definition.
If you have a blog, write a post about it and email the link to me at kim@moneyandrisk.com by June 1st. I will post a link to all blogs here so that we have a centralized location. If you don’t have a blog, feel free to share in the comments.
Once the blogs links are on here or the comments, please vote on them as a reader. The story that readers like best as of June 2nd, 2010 will receive a copy of Aidan Rowley’s Life After Yes and an advance copy of Tony Hsieh’s new book, Delivering Happiness, which will hit stores on June 7th. Tony is the CEO of Zappos and built the company from $1.6 Million to over $1 Billion dollars by selling shoes through the internet to women. He is widely held out as a model to follow for success.
Disclosure: Aidan Rowley’s book Life after Yes was purchased by Money and Risk specifically for the giveaway. Tony Hsieh’s book Delivering Happiness was provided by Zappos for the giveaway. I received no compensation from these two authors.
Success Posts
1. Hiromistone – What is Success
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Stopping over from SITS!
I’m a little busy today, but will definitely take up your challenge sometime next week.
Welcome Tasha. Looking forward to reading your post.
Stopping over from Seven Sisters Alumnae Club — I, too, will be giving your challenge some serious thought this week, and will let you know when I’ve tackled it!
Hi Jane,
Welcome. It’s such a critical question because how people define success affects their choices ranging from business decisions, money, spending to career.
Saw you on the Seven sisters group, I’m working on one but it’s not an easy one to write.
Oh Hiromi,
It is not easy. I spent 10 hrs nonstop pouring my heart out on those two “success” posts. I had no idea that the disapproval that my friends and I faced would still affected me years later. Society’s expectation is very hard to go against especially when you hear it everywhere and if you stand up against the norm, then you are not “inspiring”. I have to fight against it every day when I work with someone and tell them “you don’t need to risk that much in investing because your needs only requires this”. The biggest issue is seeing how people overextend themselves because of they’re told success is.
Hi Kim,
Okay I’ve got something resembling a coherent thought. Do I put it on my blog and link to yours? Sorry, I’m new to this.
Post on your own blog. Email me the link to your post: Kim@moneyandrisk.com. I will create a link to your blog and post on the article in my blog. Sorry I have to do it this way because we’re still in beta. My programmers are changing the programming codes daily and I don’t want to lose links for other people. It’s safe and protected when it’s inside my post.
This will help your blog get more visibility because my readers will see your blog and link through. It will also help you get better ranking with Google because your post is inside the body of my article vs. being outside of it via a widget, comment or sidebar.
Hi Kim,
As I’ve been thinking about the meaning of success and remembering essays I’ve written in the past, I revisited one that I wrote about MONEY several years ago. The following is excerpted from that (and I’ll then follow it with a few fresh-as-of-today sentences…)
As a preamble to the excerpt, this references a book project I had decided to take on with Sue, an older friend of mine. The book was to be a celebration of Sue’s unique collection of male/female earrings. Anyway, here’s picking up early on in my MONEY essay:
At our first meeting, we agreed that we didn’t know where to begin. What would the book look like? What would it tell? Sue had many ideas because she had been sharing the concept with people for years, and everyone had an opinion. But no one opinion had settled as the definitive one.
To start somewhere, we decided simply to examine a few exemplary pairs of earrings. Sue would look at them and share with me whatever came to mind.
She brought out from her collection an extremely colorful couple, and she gazed upon them for a moment or two. “Oh, now, this pair!” she stated. “This pair really brings up my money issues because, at the time, it was the most expensive pair of male/female earrings I ever bought, and that made me very uncomfortable.”
Sue then added, entre nous, that she really is “weird” about money. “We’re really quite well-off, you know,” she said, referring to herself and Mort. “But the way I act, you’d think we didn’t have any money at all!”
“That’s funny,” I said. “I’m just the opposite. The way I walk out of jobs, you’d think I had a trust fund!”
“Oh,” Sue replied, after a pause. “I thought you did.”
Sue was dead serious in her response, and I knew it. And, later that day, driving home from our meeting, I thought, “S**t, if I have people thinking I have a trust fund, then I am definitely doing something right.”
… SO that’s the excerpt. I’ll add now that when I shared this anecdote with a friend a few days after it happened, my friend said, “But, you do, Katie. You have a trust in the universe fund.”
It’s funny. I clearly do not relate success to money. But, when I realized that someone THOUGHT I had money, I knew that I was a success.