Success is a Subjective State of Mind

Success. Some crave it with all of their heart; others seek it to the end of the world, but end up not even finding what they are looking for. Is it possible that they have trouble finding what they are looking for because they do not know exactly what it is they are looking for? Merriam Webster’s dictionary defines success as “the fact of getting or achieving wealth, respect, or fame; the correct or desired result of an attempt, someone or something that is successful.” Unfortunately even within this definition, there are concepts that are hard to explain and explore. “Correct” is a term that is subjective and hardly ever is there one correct way of doing anything. How can one succeed at anything without there being an absolute way of determining success? I believe that success is a subjective term and society develops there own individual basis of determining what it means. It is a definition that changes within each individual’s personality and conforms to their needs and desires (2014).

Obadassi Battal, a writer for the International Journal of Academic Research, wrote an article titled The Effect of Learned Helplessness of the Success. He discovers intrigued cognitive correlations between learning abilities and success. By following a group of students from fourth grade on, he developed an interesting hypothesis. He believes that with few exceptions, people construct their own perspective on success. In other words, you can control exactly how successful you are (or at least “think” you are) by molding and constructing a world view.

Battal believes that other than instinctive reactions, or reflexes, humans naturally learn all things. They learn language and movement and all sorts of human activity by watching a listen...

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...national Journal of Academic Research. Research Part B; 2013, n.d. Web.

This source showed how success isn't always something that just is a divine gift that is given to a special few, but rather can be taught and learned by a systematic process. By changing how an individual thinks and learns behavior, the researchers in this article believe that you can affect how the individual perceives and defines success. The study also separates the effectiveness this project has across certain demographics such as gender and economic class.

"Successful." Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, N.d. Web. 30 Jan. 2014.

This is the official American definition for the English word "Successful." It will be the starting point of my paper and I will be able to elaborate and explore this definition from differing perspectives.