(Graduate from university set the standard for success?)
Are you the kind of person that feel like you have gone so far but actually you have been nowhere? Have you ever felt like your live is just a series of failure? Have you ever felt like you have never achieved something or maybe something that really matters in your life? Or maybe you are the kind of person who moderately thinks that “okay, I have achieved something but it seems nothing compare to what my peers have achieved”? If you are one of them, hold still because I’m about to ask you one important thing, what is success to you?
People often give themselves a hard time thinking that they have done nothing and they need to do more, they need to achieve more. Now, on the one hand this is the kind of achievement motivation necessary to force us to reach the sky. However, this way of thinking can also turn us to be one of those people that never do anything to save our life from this so-called misery. We continue to punish ourselves without even thinking of giving our hard working body and mind a little credit and end up realizing that we are running out of energy to actually do some improvement because we are too busy blaming ourselves. Now, we do not want to be one of those sad people right? How to save ourselves from such situation? Let’s examine some common misunderstandings in the way people measure success.
1. Success is when we achieve what our peers achieved in a certain period of time
This common misunderstanding mostly comes from childhood experience when our parents compare our achievements in school with the achievements of our siblings, our neighbors, or our friends. We are not appreciated with what we achieve but we are measured with what others have. It is good if we are coming first in class not because we have worked hard but because it means that our next door neighbor who went to the same school went second.
We bring this memory to our adulthood and it makes us feel bad if our peers achieve more than us. We never learn to appreciate our talent or our dream. If our friend work as a manager in a company it can make us feel less successful if so far we only publish one book for instance. I mean, how we could compare our friend who works as an accountant to us who work as a writer, for instance. It is totally different right?
2. Success equals wealth
Most people measure success with how much money people have at a certain period of time. It is a serious misunderstanding that will unconsciously force people to do whatever it takes to be rich or at least to look rich. It will make people live in denial.
We know that wealth is not everything. Successful career mostly brings financial success too, but it is not automatically make success equals wealth. Success can also cover successful personal relationship, successful marriage relationship, or great academic achievement. Why don’t we measure our success not with the amount of money that we have but with the number of smile we put on people’s face? I believe this changing way of thinking will solve many problems in this world. Just do it and see what happens, said Mario Teguh, a famous motivator in Indonesia.
3. Success at young age is better than success when we are older
Success is success, no matter how old you are when you achieve it. We often give too much credit on people who achieve success in such a young age, as if success achieved by older people is something natural because they are old. Credit, praise, and appreciation are of course highly important to increase people’s self esteem and raise their motivation. So, why don’t we think that compliment for older people is equally important with compliment addressed to younger people. This way of thinking will help us appreciate other people more and reduce the risk for us to blame ourselves for not achieving a certain stage of success when we are younger.
The following question for us will be what should we do to overcome this misunderstanding that has been keeping on hostage? We should realize that first, some people achieve something with short walk and others achieve something with long run. This does not mean that one group of people are better, smarter, or luckier than the other group. This just means that we have different road in achieving what we want to achieve. People that do it in a relatively short time might enjoy success faster, however, they might lack of failure experiences, an experience important to teach us to stand tall through all the pain and strive. People that go a long way might be rich in experience but they might lack in time and opportunity to reach more because of their age or other factors. Either way, as long as it does not make us stop working, hoping, and achieving it will not cause any problem because in the end, long way of short way, we will get there anyway. We just need to believe and keep moving and do not forget to give ourselves credit for any success or failure along the way.
Second, we also have to realize that the measure of success is not a matter of when, or where, or how much we achieve but on whether or not we make a commitment to make tomorrow better than today. Eventually, we have to think in terms of progress rather than result. Great achievement will not matter if it is not followed with continuous work and more achievements in the future. It is great if one person can make a worldwide hit song in a certain period of his/her life but it is greater if they can continue create hits and non hits throughout their lifetime because it means they are progressing, they are learning, and keep moving. ***
Sakdiyah Ma’ruf, 19 Desember 2009
In the Bedroom 