Defining Success

A lot of people talk about success as though it's something concrete – like something you can touch or feel. In reality, it is transitory and can be defined any way you want. When I was younger, I never really questioned the artificial construct of success created by Lagos letropolitan market square, which involved the usual material trappings of fashion, big houses and fancy cars.

Later, as I became educated in professional writing and researching, I wondered if it was healthy to have my mind, thoughts, and values influenced by television commercials and billboards which were basically fishing lures cast by men in suits fishing the vast ocean of consumerism for bites. They were basically defining and selling happiness, for a price.

Rather than rely on the lagos big men trends and your friends to define your definition of success for you, look deep inside for what you want. Also, realize that you are already successful now since you are alive and you had what it took to be alive now, and imagine that you are already where you want to be.

It may sound odd, but research has shown that the wealthiest and most influential people had a mindset different from what you were probably taught in school. Instead of thinking they had to earn their right to have self esteem or feel happy through accomplishment, they started out imagining that they were already in the mansion before they had a penny.

This is a philosophy that Robert Allen, author of the One Minute Millionaire refers to a lot. Allen has been featured on television many times and is famous for picking people out of unemployment lines and homeless shelters, mentoring them and seeing them transform themselves into millionaires within months.

Ironically, I am finding myself having more success both financially and personally when I detach happiness from achievement and focus on being happy with what I have now.

In the past, I was taught the opposite: that you had to earn your happiness; that you had to prove yourself before you could have self esteem. This attitude caused me to struggle, feel empty, and it basically wore me out.

Starting with the attitude that happiness is not something you pursue, but something that's already there if you let go of all the mind chatter coming from external influences, is what gave me the energy and vitality to make things happen.

If you think this way, success starts to come naturally as your positive energy attracts more positive people and opportunities seemingly pop up out of the blue.

In thinking about definitions of success, I also started to think about the obsession with goals which I had pushed on me a lot during school. Let's say you achieve your goal, how long would your satisfaction last before you would need to achieve another.

New cars, new fashions and new definitions and standards of success and attractiveness always change. Would keeping on top of this make life one long treadmill of infinite wanting? When would it end? Would it be successful to go crazy in a state of constant pursuit?

If adhering to the "corporate" image of success drives you, by all means go with that. However, true success could be defined as happiness. Not just for the individual, but for man kind. It is usually a lack of happiness that creates conflict in the world and the world can be changed only one person at a time and it starts with you.

End#

Salau O John
Poet, Teacher, Speaker and Published Writer