Success

The idea of success has haunted my thoughts since I was a child. I often admired and sometimes envied successful people around me. Many of my decisions and acts where based on dreams and aspiration of success or at least thoughts on how to avoid failure. The complexity of the idea of success and its consequences is constantly troubling my humble mind.

I have always wondered about the qualities that make a person successful. Intelligence, resilience, commitment and hard work are some of the keys to success. These qualities most times should be the necessary tools to achieve professional, social and family goals. The extent to which someone possesses and grows these qualities is closely related to his chances of succeeding in life.

Achieving all or some of his goals should make a person happy and content. His self-confidence will most probably grow exponentially. Some times it may even lead to arrogance, in any case successful people are inclined to test their abilities to the maximum and they expect others to follow. This overstretching may lead to great things and/or catastrophic failures.

People often wonder how successful they truly are and whether they should put more effort in it. The crucial question is at which point should someone feel successful. How do we recognize and measure success, can we measure are own success or do others do it for us? The recognition of someone’s success by his piers can often be more important to him than the success itself. This recognition can bring fame, even glory and pave the path for new accomplishments. A person who is considered by others successful in his field is well respected, people follow him and are persuaded by him more easily. The environment around him is more favorable and full of opportunities.

At some point most people look back at their lives and assess their acts and achievements. For some this is a pleasant experience, for others melancholic or even depressing. Sometimes it is hard to remember the challenges of the past and to explain what went wrong and why some of the aims and objectives where never met. Sometimes even if the majority of the goals have been achieved we feel that we should have aimed for greater, more important things, that we underestimated our abilities and/or prioritized things wrongly.

Success remains my holy grail…