Royane Real

By Royane Real

I have always been very interested in the topic of success, yet I must confess that I always had a problem in understanding what success really means.  Because I wasn't really clear about what success means to me, I also had a lot of difficulty deciding whether success was something I really wanted.

It took me a long time to realize that there are lots of different ways to define success.  Every person has to decide for themselves "What do I mean by success?"

Is success simply a question of making lots of money?  For many people, success means being very rich. For these people, having a lot of money means you are truly successful.  

Yet, for me, that definition of success never felt right.  I was never able to motivate myself to climb that particular ladder. 

 Over the years I have known many people who achieved financial success, yet inside they felt empty.  They felt they were going the wrong direction, even though they had clawed their way to the tops of corporations and made a lot of money.  I was worried that would happen to me if I ever pushed myself and became successful.

I know one woman who pursues her goal every day without fail.  I don’t know what her goal is exactly, since I can’t figure it out.  But every day, rain or shine, she comes out carrying a sign and parades in front of some government buildings downtown, protesting something.  I don’t know exactly what her protest is about, because her sign makes no sense.

I have watched her carrying this sign for over seventeen years.

But she is one of the happiest people you could ever hope to meet. 

Sure, her ideas of success are quite different from my ideas of success.  She seems to be fulfilling her idea of what her purpose in life is, and who am I really to say that she is wrong?  If she knew more about my life, she might think I am equally misguided in the choices that I make.

I sincerely believe that everyone has their own purpose that they are supposed to live for.  If achieving money and power is right for you, then that is the road you are supposed to follow.

On the other hand, if you are supposed to follow some other road, then you will have a different definition of success.  Maybe there is a hidden purpose in carrying a wooden sign at an intersection and waving at cars, day after day, I don’t really know.  Perhaps this woman is happy because she is very successful at pursuing the goal she has chosen.

Whatever your inner definition of being successful is, that is the only definition you should be listening to when you try to decide whether or not you are headed in the right direction.  If you achieve great success in something that doesn’t satisfy you internally, you will never be happy anyway.

It might be very wrong for a person who wants to seek money and power to walk away from that and try to become an artist instead.  If they achieve success as an artist, that will be the wrong goal for them.  Their success will never be truly satisfying.

If your main definition of success is to raise a happy family, nothing you achieve outside of your home will matter to you as much as whether you succeeded or failed in your main goal.

So, I would encourage anyone who truly wants to be successful, to first look within and decide what your definition of success truly is.  Then you don’t need to try to live up to anyone else’s idea of success.

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