What's Your Definition of Success?

 by Jiali Hicks

To me, success has always been this hazy amoeba that never really evolved into something tangible. Phrases like “living your best life” and “being happy and fulfilled” often crop up, but what does “happiness” and “fulfillment” look like and how do I even get there? How do I know if I’m “living my best life” if I haven’t gone and tested all the other infinite lives I could’ve lived and made a comparison? 

A quick Google search tells you that success is “the accomplishment of an aim or a purpose”, and while it gives us a better starting point (in the sense that it’s measurable), it’s still incredibly vague. So I decided to ask the people around me for a bit of help, and to those who are struggling to define it themselves, I hope this document acts as a little bit of inspiration. 

Lovely, simple statements

“Success is not being worried about your future, because you trust yourself to handle it.”

“Success is when you don’t need to do things you don’t want to do.”

“Success is being able to spend much of your time doing the things you love.”

“Simply when you achieve what you planned to do.”

“Too complex of a philosophy for an email.”

Pride + Achievement

“Success is being at a stage where you're not only proud of what you've achieved, but no longer ashamed of the things you were ashamed of before.”

“Success is achieving the goals you set out to achieve, or if you don’t manage to achieve them, to be able to look back and be proud of what you’ve done.”

“Success is when a person has accomplished their own pursuits and is proud of that fact, or when a person is defined to be successful in the eyes of society where they are found to have higher achievements compared to the majority.”

“Success means achieving something that you are proud to tell others about.”

"Success is when you achieve something that you are proud of, regardless of how others perceive it and regardless of recognition or reward."

“It’s when you achieve something important in your life, and this importance depends on the context. If someone plays sports as a career, becoming world champion might be their idea of success. If I play sports as a hobby, my target is just to reach a higher level than I was previously, but to me, that has just as much importance as becoming world champion.”

"I would define success as the achievement of your goals set out over the course of your life. Most people subconsciously decide on what their life looks like when they 'grow up' and they can begin to make it a success by hitting milestones upon their journey to that goal."

"Well, success is completing the goals you set out for yourself, whatever those goals may be. There are big successes and there are small successes, and I think what makes you successful is the ratio between how many of these goals you actually reach and how many you let pass you by. Although, the point at which you determine that you have completed your goal can move (and I think they should move, since this neither limits you nor does it set you up for disappointment)".

"Success in an activity about achieving your goal. If my goal is to walk to the top of Snowdon then success will be when I get to the top. But the goal should be set within the parameters of what I can achieve; if I am playing Roger Federer at tennis, then success will not be winning the match but playing the best shots I can. What, then, is success in life? I would suggest not focusing on status, monetary or otherwise, as this is about winning a competition against others and, just like my match with Federer, the result is out of my control. The life goals I would suggest would be (i) to have a meaningful occupation that is useful to society, (ii) to develop harmonious relationships with family and friends; (iii) to pursue engaging and rewarding pastimes (sport, music, reading . . .). If these goals are achieved, then you will have a life which is balanced and successful."

Self-actualization - “desire to become the most that one can be.” It is the highest level in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, a theory that states that a person’s motivation and behaviour is determined by their position on the pyramid. From the bottom up, there are physiological needs, safety needs, love and belonging, esteem, and finally self-actualization. Only when you have enough of one level do you move up to the next one. 

“Having a positive impact on Earth (i.e. leaving it a better place than you found it). Obviously not in every aspect, but in the areas where you can make a difference and have made a difference.”

“For me, success does not require you to compare yourself with others as it should be a moment when you think your hard work has paid off and you’ve become a better self. Every improvement you make shows you are successful in ruling your life and you are capable of pursuing your aspirations.”

“Success is ultimately about being secure and feeling that you’ve gained something from an experience. It is all about what your perception of victory is. I would view a defeat as a success if I believed that I had given my all and despite that loss, I had still learned, grown, and benefited from the experience.”

“It’s when you’re satisfied with the level that you are performing at in an aspect of your life and meeting the targets you set when you started the journey to improving yourself.”

“I think success depends a lot on context. If it’s something small like holding the door open for someone or having a conversation with someone, as long as I’m left with a smile on my face or I’ve made my / someone else’s day better, that’s a huge success to me. Overall, I’d say as long as I’m left satisfied, it’s a success.”

"Everyone has been given a different set of gifts and talents by God, so success cannot be generalised purely on outcomes. For a person to be living to their fullest, they should not be scared or worried about what they "achieve" but be willing to do everything to the best of their ability, not being worried about making a mistake and not using fear as an excuse for not doing something. Therefore, a successful life may be filled with mistakes or seem ordinary compared to others, but it is a full life because someone has used what they have been given to its fullest."

Survival

“Survival is fighting to stand your ground when other people try to push you over. Success is getting back up when you fall.

Survival is believing in yourself when no one else does. Success is being confident about it.

Survival is learning your way around the dark, and success is turning on the light switch.”

“Success is contingent on context. For me it is a deeply fragmented experience. It ranges from maintaining harmony in a relationship, showing kindness despite the challenges and sometimes survival alone is the achievement because life can be a very hard process. What matters is how we contribute to each other, for all that will remain of one, are those intangible gifts that set seed elsewhere.”

Spiritual

"Sanctification: What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul? Mark Chapter 8, Verse 36"

Material vs. Moral

“In my opinion, it’s about happiness. It’s not about money or qualifications; it’s about how much good we can do for those around us. Since by doing good, (most) people will gain a sense of happiness, which in my opinion is a success.”

“Success is feeling content with yourself and your life, no matter your circumstances. Although material wealth enables you to have more freedom - the freedom to not have to worry about money as well as the freedom to purchase what you want - it is certainly not the most important component of success. True happiness is much more difficult to find, and yet much more rewarding.”

“Maybe it is the measure of how much freedom a person has (freedom to choose, to be exact). For example, financial independence supports the freedom of many choices.”

"My definition of success has changed over the years. When I was at school and university, I defined my success by achievement of high grades. Later, it was based on promotion and getting on well at work. Then by how much impact I had on individuals. And now having a happy work/life balance. I think few people strive for fame and fortune and people's view of what success means morphs over time and bends with ebbs and flows."

“I’m not sure how much weight the word “success” has in English, but I’d say that successes don’t always have to be big. Small goals are successes too, like I would say it is a success when I’ve finished a homework, because completing it took effort and time. However, if the homework was very easy or effortless, then that’s not a success to me.”

“I would say that success is difficult to measure and quantify, since it depends on the individual person and what they view as success in their life. For one person, it could be success if they achieve 5 passes in their GCSEs. Whereas for another, getting anything less than 6 grade 9s is not successful. Success is not objective. It can only be measured in relation to one’s own life experiences and aspirations.”

“To me, success is relative. The criteria for success will be unique to everyone. What links success for everyone is that it is something that makes you happy. It could be the result in a test, the performance on the sports field or learning a new skill.”

“For me, success is carrying out tasks to the best of my ability and according to my personal values and aims. I don’t believe it is tied to absolute outcomes, such as “getting an A*”, and it is less about the outcome and more about the process of reaching the end point.”

And one final perspective…

"Success is simple enough to identify on the micro-level of accomplishing a specific aim: such as winning a match, getting a certain mark in a test or fixing a flat tyre.

On a larger scale, it becomes more open to question what we mean by success. In our data-driven era, there is an increasing insistence that success must be measurable - and therefore material. Material attainment (wealth, status, or the fame that comes from those things) are often used to measure success.

However, a more ancient tradition taught that it was our moral actions, not our material attainment, that defined success (in some religions, the yardstick of success is a place in Heaven, which perhaps could count as material).

In a largely post-religious era such as ours, does a definition of success in moral terms still have value? To what extent are materiality and morality compatible as dimensions of success? For example, does the material success of one individual necessarily come at the expense of others, does the success of the human species necessarily come at the expense of the planet? Can something that comes at such a cost be defined as success?

Success is therefore a philosophical, political, ecological, existential question. If failure is a prerequisite for a "growth mindset", as psychologist Carol Dweck argues, there can be no such thing as success because success suggests a completed outcome, not a process. It is always the journey, not the destination, that is most significant.

Art and literature are interested in fallibility and flaws (in Tragedy, for example) because these are what make us humans rather than gods or machines. Indeed, there is perhaps something inhuman about the concept of success, just as there is about the concept of perfection: a closing off of possibilities."

I started this because I wanted a better understanding of this term that is so often used in education, in personal development, in sports and so many other aspects of life. It seems to bear the weight of a thousand mountains and yet the lightness of a speck of dust all at the same time. And, honestly, maybe that's just the nature of the word. Maybe it's the nature of a lot of words and that's just how language works; it's how life works. But whether success is considered to be a measurable achievement, or the journey to self-improvement, or the destination of that journey, or an inhuman idea of the way we should approach our lives, I hope you found something in here that gave you a better understanding of how you yourself would define it.

Thank you to everyone who contributed, and thank you to all those who have read to the end.

I think I'd call this project a success.