Personal Essay On Success: The Perception Of Success

THE SUCCESS TRAP

Success in our society is often defined by money, fame, social status and admiration from doing a respected job, an attractive spouse, expensive car or a big house.

If you are lucky to get these things our society deems you a success.

But if you fall for that perception of success, you will only be leading yourself into being unhappy and miserable.

How come?

If you define success this way, you are setting up a goal-oriented life and you are always aiming for the next goal, be it more money, losing even more weight, greater social status, an even larger house, greater respect etc.

Therefore in order to be successful, you must win the game, close the sale, attract a mate, get a bigger promotion or achieve the degree.

Your self-worth relies upon your productivity .

That is definitely unstable footing since it is not possible to win every time.

LIVING BY YOUR VALUES

Here is a challenge for you, how about redefining success? Why not live by your values?

When you do this, life becomes much easier since you are totally controlling how you live by your values and you can decide how to act on them.

This is very useful if your goal happens to be well in the future.

You can live a successful life today by living your values, you don't have to delay success until you reach your goal.

Just live your values.

If you use this definition, a career woman that leaves her career to pursue her values of love, nurturing and caring to stay at home with her children, has more success than a CEO who rakes in millions but isn't living her values of spending valuable time with her family.

Albert Einstein once said, "Try not to be a man of success, but rather try to become a man of