What is Your Definition of Success?

Individuals who go through therapy experience emotional or mental dissatisfactions in their inner being.

I notice one thing that often surfaced:  their not being clear about the definition of success or accomplishment in their lives.

Speaking to Roberta, an American client, success to her is about making money, getting famous, and traveling.

She’s a lot like many people in our culture. Success is a goal that has dollar signs and creature comforts attached to it.

What is success for you?

I invite you to go beyond your initial answer or cultural expectation. It’s important to do this so you can measure your journey ... and the point of your own life.

For example, I know a countryman who rose from abject poverty whose life goal for years now is to help people financially and spiritually to get out of poverty.

He builds billionaire businesses, but lives a very simple life, so he can share to the poor and contribute to the government’s anti-poverty program.

The focus of success for him is not himself. It’s not primarily about making money or getting famous. Or, accumulating worldly accolades.

In the core of his heart, success is about enriching the lives of others. To help redeem people from the curse of material and spiritual poverty.

That’s his definition of success, which is a totally brilliant reason to live!

I’m reminded of several depressed clients who were rich in possessions but could not find meaning in their lives.

I often say to them, “Go out of your house each day and find at least one person to give to or serve.” It never fails to work to help save them back to mental health.

“The purpose of life is not to be happy,” Ralph Waldo Emerson writes. “It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”

Such is the point of success and there is no final end game.

Secrets of Your Self: