What’s success? When the journey is as enjoyable as the destination

What is success? Is it an idea, a feeling, or simply just an illusion? Are we fooling our minds with this thought, or is the mind fooling us? For some, success is having full meals twice a day for the next 30 years. For others, it is about becoming a billionaire and running in a race till they give up.

Elon Musk, Michelle Obama, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Indra Nooyi are some of the wealthiest people in the world. But, one thing is common between them: they don’t work to be successful, instead, they just follow their passion with complete dedication and give their hundred per cent to it.

But then again, how does one know whether they have attained the acme of success in their life? The simple answer is: they don’t. A person who wishes to help his/her colleague get an ICU bed or becomes a plasma donor during a pandemic, s/he can be termed as a successful person. If someone wishes to sign a financial deal and gets his work done that could be success too.

People may or may not be aware of what they want all the time, but that doesn’t mean they do not aspire to be successful. Anyone with the smallest of achievements can be successful, and anyone with the greatest achievement can be unsuccessful.

The famous American actor, Matthew McConaughey said at the Oscars 2014 ceremony, “Every day, every week, every month, and every year of my life, my hero is always 10 years away. I’m never going to be my hero. I’m not going to attain that. I know I’m not, and that’s just fine with me because that keeps me with somebody to keep on chasing. ”

He said this while receiving an award for ‘The Best Actor’, and at that time he was pretty clear: That Oscar award was not the ultimate success of his life. His message was about how he just wanted an anchor so he could chase his dreams and be the best version of himself every time he thinks of himself as a hero.

Success: the accomplishment of an aim or purpose. The definition says it all! It means that success is simply completing one task, post which you can head onto other tasks. It is a continuous process of self-improvement and once you have achieved what you want, you will want more and more. Therefore, the margin of success consistently varies. For instance, if you have a genie, you can ask him for two wishes. However, in the third wish, you wish for more wishes. Similarly, no one can put a full stop to success. This is because your needs exceed, your wants exceed, and thus your definition of your success changes each time.

It’s like you have your share of appetisers at a restaurant, and you still feel hungry enough to have the main course. According to me, success is the state of having achieved and accomplished an aim or objective. It is the feeling of satisfaction after accomplishing your dream. When you feel that you have completed a particular thing, and you can do more and probably better than that, this is when you know success. If you inspire people to get out of their beds every day and more so, if you are their reason they do it, then my friend, you have tasted success.

But what if this doesn’t happen? What if you did the right thing but did not get satisfactory results? This would mean that you have the aspiration to be successful, you want to be successful, and you will eventually achieve it. One failure does not decide how successful you want to be. So, let it be an anchor that pushes you until you know you have done your best.

Success is a journey where you will have endless paths of setbacks, failures, joy and satisfaction. And at the end of this journey, you just need to find what is for you.