Successfulness Defined

“Suc­cess is always tem­po­rary. When all is said and done, the only thing you’ll have left is your char­ac­ter.“
–Vince Gill

Today, when one is con­sid­ered “suc­cess­ful,” that per­son is usu­ally labeled as such accord­ing to some exter­nal cri­te­rion. This is only nat­ural, for along with the major­ity of the human race you have the ten­dency to judge a book by its cover. What you per­ceive or observe through any of your five senses is often­times inter­preted as real­ity or truth. And the prob­lem, how­ever, is that when you dis­tin­guish that which is suc­cess to you, you are only scratch­ing the surface.

To show you that there is a greater suc­cess, one that goes beyond all of this stuff, let me enlighten you for a moment.

First of all, I must admit that there’s noth­ing wrong with exter­nal sym­bols of suc­cess. But the real­ity is that things like these are in and of them­selves sheer opin­ions; are they not? An expen­sive sports car is just a car. A gold dia­mond encrusted watch is just a watch. The vice-​​presidency of a large cor­po­ra­tion is just a title. A fat bank account is just a bunch of num­bers. And a goal achieved is but a moment in eternity.

These things do not con­sti­tute true suc­cess. They are opin­ions or exter­nal mea­sure­ments of success.

To prove my point, here’s a forin­stance: Try to give a lux­u­ri­ous 50-​​foot yacht to a Tibetan monk and then see what he thinks about your won­der­ful gift let alone what he’ll do with it. “Nice fire­wood,” he’ll prob­a­bly say.

The same goes for the opin­ions you hold. If own­ing an expen­sive sports car means a lot to you, do you think, “That car is suc­cess” or “buy­ing that car will make me suc­cess­ful?” Of course not. What you are truly say­ing, though, is that the car rep­re­sents suc­cess or that it sym­bol­izes suc­cess, afflu­ence, or whatever.

The prob­lem, how­ever, is that the car is not only a per­sonal sym­bol but also a sym­bol one wishes to project to the out­side world. Besides only being a means of trans­porta­tion, which in my esti­ma­tion is also debat­able, a sports car doesn’t have any value in itself except for the value that it has been given — by oth­ers as well as by you. This is where the ego often gets in the way. If you owned one, more than likely you are try­ing to show how suc­cess­ful you are rather than just “being” successful.

A sports car doesn’t have any intrin­sic worth. To make it valu­able, you must give it value — and that’s your value. And your value is what you want other peo­ple to notice. So, it all boils down to self-​​esteem. And this goes for any­thing in the mate­r­ial or phys­i­cal world. Your goals, your achieve­ments, or your per­for­mance are infal­li­bly tied not only to how you feel about them but how you want oth­ers to feel about you.

This is the rea­son why all exter­nal forms of suc­cess are merely con­sti­tuted of opin­ions. Suc­cess rep­re­sents dif­fer­ent things to dif­fer­ent peo­ple, and a sym­bol is only an expres­sion of a feel­ing about suc­cess and does not con­sti­tute this true suc­cess I am refer­ring to. There­fore, suc­cess is but an illu­sion and this illu­sion is the cause of so much frus­tra­tion, anger, pain, and lack we see in the world today.

The point I’m try­ing to make here is that suc­cess is not what hap­pens on the out­side, because any­thing that exists in the phys­i­cal dimen­sion is what it is. It is a sym­bol of an opin­ion. It doesn’t mean any­thing except for the mean­ing it has been given and, on top of all that, only to the per­son this mean­ing comes from.

If you give your value to some exter­nal thing, it is because you are seek­ing to bring value to your life some­how. Whether it’s drugs, alco­hol, sex, or, of course, suc­cess, you are try­ing to increase your self-​​image through some exter­nal process. If so, that means that deep down inside you feel you don’t have any real value — which, of course, is absolutely false.

Your real value, your spir­i­tual suc­cess­ful­ness, is the source of all that you are. It is your great­ness, your true poten­tial, this higher part of you that makes you truly suc­cess­ful, and is so with our with­out sym­bols. It is with “in” you and not with “out’ you.

For exam­ple, if you feel that you are worth­less with­out these exter­nal sym­bols, or in other words if you are pro­ject­ing your inner value through outer “things” (be it accom­plish­ments or pos­ses­sions), you are ignor­ing your inner value. In plain Eng­lish, you don’t believe in yourself.

If the value you assign to that which is out­side of you is meant to replace that which comes from within, then you are never going to feel ful­filled no mat­ter what. You must replace it con­stantly. This is what Wayne Dyer calls the “Psy­chol­ogy of More” because you will never be sat­is­fied. You will always want more since you are but merely leas­ing some outer value.

Like a drug, exter­nal suc­cess will only be tem­po­rary. And once you come down from the high, you will con­stantly crave your next “hit.” Sim­i­larly, that thing you con­sider as suc­cess is but an illu­sion, a form of stim­u­lus, for true suc­cess­ful­ness, which is your spirit, comes from within — not from the outside.

There­fore, to answer the ques­tion “What is true suc­cess?” here’s the million-​​dollar answer: True suc­cess is none other than the sim­ple abil­ity you have to con­nect with that “You” within. That’s it. Noth­ing more and noth­ing less. While mate­r­ial, phys­i­cal, or “vis­i­ble” suc­cess is made up of things such as out­comes or acqui­si­tions, what I call true suc­cess is the abil­ity you have to con­tin­u­ously reach your high­est spir­i­tual poten­tial. It’s how suc­cess­ful you are inwardly rather than how suc­cess­ful you are outwardly.

It is real success.

It is spir­i­tual success.

About the Author

Last 5 Posts By Michel Fortin

• How to Capture and Captivate Attention
• The Real Problem With The Flaw of Attraction
• Two Shining Stars in an Age of Darkness
• Changes, Relaunches, and Extreme Makeovers
• Superior Value Equals Superior Sales

Other Related Posts

• You are a "You" Potentiality
• The Power of Alignment
• Self Management
• From the Inside Out
• Calculating Your Risks