Success Only Comes in One Flavor
March 18th, 2007As an individual success only comes in one flavor and that flavor is YOUR flavor. Success is what you deem as success, not what your parents, friends, school teachers, boyfriends or girlfriends consider a success. Although I believe the other people in your life might have the best of intentions at heart, only you can decide on what path your life should take. Only when you have the courage to follow your own star will you ever have a chance at not only success but it is your quickest path to real happiness.
Everybody has their own opinion on what they consider is success and although most people would agree that success means being the best you can be at something, it should also include that you love what you do. If you LIKE what you do and you make a lot of money and that makes you happy, great, you may consider yourself to be successful. However, if you LOVE what you do, would not want to be doing anything else and make enough money to get by, you may consider yourself a complete success. There is no right or wrong answer to the perfect definition of success but to me success if defined by your level of happiness in life. I think success is intrinsically linked with happiness.
It reminds me of that old question, would you rather be rich and unhappy or poor and happy? It is obviously a trick question in the way it is worded but anytime you ever hear that question it always makes you stop and think for a while. The true question behind this question is simply, would you rather be happy or unhappy? If you are truly happy, that means that the people and events surrounding your life are making you happy so who really cares about anything else?
During the course of my own life I have worked myself into a position without being fully aware of my life situation while I was kind of living on autopilot and found myself in an unhappy place. I had been following a path that others had followed that I thought lead to success but I certainly did not feel all that happy on the journey nor when I found myself in some place I never wanted to be. This caused me to re-evaluate my life and think about what success really meant to me. The more I thought about what I wanted, what my parents wanted, what I thought society considered a success the more I realized success and happiness go hand in hand. You cannot have one without the other.
You usually find out what makes you happy by first finding out what makes you unhappy, this is the main reason you should never have any regrets. You could not have possibly gotten onto the path of true happiness and success until you took the journey through the quagmire of unhappiness and tasted the bitter flavor of what others deem success. It’s that bitter taste you get in your mouth, figuratively speaking, that leads you to that sweet flavor that you want to taste for the rest of your life.
In most cases your parents and friends want what is best for you and you cannot blame them for that. They may even be bitterly disappointed with you when you choose to follow your own star but when they see you arrive at that happy place they will know you have achieved success and so will you. Success is very much like eating your favorite food, once you taste it you will want to keep going back for more. You will know when you find it, if you are not sure you obviously are not quite there yet.
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