Success

Success is when being content and achieving perfection reached a balance – Werner van Tonder

Walking past two people chatting away, I couldn’t help but to hear them using the words:” then he must be successful”... Did you ever stop and think that maybe your perception of success is totally different from another person’s perception.  We use it in sentences to state how we perceive the status of someone or the outcome of a situation or event.

When an event is planned and the outcome of the event was that profits were made or enough people attended or that it all went without a hiccup, does that mean that it went to perfection? Some might say that just that it went without a hiccup, it was successful but others would not regard it as a success because it was not perfect and thus falls short of being a success.

It has to be said that a balance must be struck between how happy you are with how good it was. Imagine you are retired (maybe you are), and you have enough to get you by for the rest of your life. Would you say you were successful in life? Most people would say yes. That is because they are happy where they are in life and they feel that they achieved their goal to a point where they are satisfied. They might not have perfected anything in life, but perfection can be sacrificed to be successful.

We often try to substitute our perception of success to accommodate other people’s perception. Why must you be rich and good in everything to be seen as successful? Why is it that the general population decide what your success is? Who gave anyone the right to determine your success in life?

Pressures of life, work, relationships and money push our boundaries. We run the wrong race. The goal should not be society’s success but your own personal success. People fall victims to drugs, alcohol or even work because they do not even know when they are happy. Keeping up with the Jones’s is not success. Your own happiness and the rate at which you are willing to compromise your lifestyle for that happiness dictate where your success lies.

Be an individual. Don’t let people dictate what your success should be. You alone have the right to reserve your success goal post. Never let another man’s race become yours. We all have different needs and potentials. It is so easy to get depressed comparing your life to other peoples successes.

Decide what makes you happy and go get it. Forget all the little nuances that wont contribute to YOUR success, because success is all you will have to show when you die.