Defining Success in America

WHAT IS SUCCESS?
“Success is getting what you want”...
Warren Buffet said it when I heard it for the first time. It was the first half of a quote by Andrew Carnegie. The second half was “Happiness is wanting what you get”. That statement had a profound impact on me because it was so simple. I mean, at that time I thought success was reserved only for rock stars, corporate giants and famous people. Not me, a kid from Glenville, NY. So I started to ask myself why is success so complex and difficult to achieve? Why does it seem so unattainable? Why do we think of it as something that only certain people can have? I’ll tell you, but first let’s talk about what the word success has come to mean. In America, success has been attached to all that glitters. It is synonymous with material possessions, corporate stature and money. Those things may represent success to you and I am not trying to label that good, bad, or anything for that matter. This book will explore many areas of success and the concepts that I have learned and developed which will help you gain a better understanding of what it takes to be and feel successful.
The idea that success is this big grandiose thing can be a limiting belief and I’ll tell you why I think that. What success really is; is getting what you want. It’s as simple as that. You could have a goal that is as small as getting to the office this morning. That’s a goal and once you achieve that goal, you have achieved success. In other words, you were successful at getting to the office. So, on one hand, someone could have a goal of getting out of bed and walking to the mailbox. That could be a goal for someone. On the other hand, someone else could have a goal of building a 10 billion dollar corporation that employs thousands of people. That too, is a goal. There are many different levels of success, and the importance or value of the particular achievement is for the individual to determine.
The more meaning and complexity we give to the word success, the more confusing and immeasurable it becomes. When someone says, success to me is family or wealth or health or happiness, etc. I wonder if those definitions are so vague that they are unattainable. I don’t think having a vague definition of the word success helps people. Like I said before, you can have many different levels of success based on the value the particular achievement has to you. You can determine for yourself, how important your accomplishments are to you and with that, will come your own personal measurement of success. You will then be able to build your own hierarchy of goals, so you can take strategic action in the areas that you feel are a priority. The idea here, is for the reader to develop their own path to success. Develop a path that makes sense for you, rather than trying to conform to what success means to someone else. I was once asked if I believed I was successful. My answer was, absolutely. I have had many successes. I have had successes of all sizes. Some that many would consider small achievements and some that were huge accomplishments in my life. When you can recognize achievements in your life as “successes”, you get a sense of whether or not you are moving forward, backward or standing still because you will start to stack these successes up and compound them upon each other. Don’t get caught in the rut of defining the word success in a way that makes it impossible to achieve.
I have learned that everyone seems to have a completely different definition and meaning for the word success. The idea that most people have a very vague definition brought me to the thought process of what the word means to me. This is the reason I wrote this book. The process helped me really dig into it and try to define it for myself and when all was said and done, I landed on the Andrew Carnegie definition, “Success is getting what you want”. I think it is a real problem for people when their definition is not clear because it is like chasing an invisible target. You may have a sense of where it is, but you can’t really see it. I wanted the definition to be clear for me so I would have something to sink my teeth into, something that I could grab onto and get ahold of. By defining success in a way that is measurable and clear, it makes more logical sense to us and can become a regular occurrence in our lives, as opposed to turning it into an emotional monster. Instead, the emotions can be attached to each achievement. Of course, you want an emotionally driven reason to achieve something and I think people are better served by having the emotion attached to the individual goal as opposed to the word success itself. Otherwise, we need to achieve everything that we want in life in order to feel successful and that could take a very long time. In my opinion, that is much too long a time to go without experiencing the wonderful feeling of success.
Success in my opinion is exactly what Andrew Carnegie said. It’s “getting what you want”. It is an effect of an action. It really is that simple. The problem occurs when we attach the word success to ourselves. What do I mean? You see, most people tend to link “success” to themselves as a way of defining themselves as a person. “I am successful”, “I’ll be successful when…”, “I wish I was successful”, etc. They are only successful if they have achieved all their goals, all the things their parents want them to achieve, the goals of their peers, what society thinks their goals or achievements should be, what the media depicts as desirable or where they “should be” financially in the World. This is a sure way to never feel successful.
I think, what most people call “success” is really a picture of their ultimate life. I say this because, when you ask someone what success means to them, they’ll give you a description of the way they want their life to be. They describe how they want their relationships, or business, or their financial situation, or any number of goal scenarios they may have. So by creating a picture of the life they want, they are also defining the word success for themselves. I think if success were defined, not as how you want your life to look, but rather, whether or not you’ve achieved a goal, there would be much more measurability and accomplishment along the path of life. This way, you are not constantly chasing it while never fully attaining it. We are designed to always want more, to want to grow, to strive to evolve, which means that we are never quite “there”. This is a good thing because this drive and incessant need to grow is what keeps humanity moving forward in every aspect of life. That’s the beauty and magic of being human. We always want more. We always want to grow. If success means that you’re at that pinnacle, or at the top of the mountain, or have achieved everything you’ve ever dreamed of, then where do you go from there? When we achieve a goal, there is usually another one waiting right around the corner. “I’ve climbed that mountain, now I want that one, and that one”... The point is; we are never done therefore if success means achieving everything we won’t truly know what that is like. So, if we can achieve successes along the way, that will give us the fuel to climb the next mountain and throughout the process we also get to enjoy the feelings that go along with the accomplishments. In other words, we get to enjoy the feeling of success.
Success is not the goal itself or a way to define the person; it’s simply the achievement of the goal.