A definition for success ?
I just came across Ralph Waldo Emerson’s definition of success (see below) and thought I share it with you as it is a great stimulus material for your own discussion with your friends or coach and further thinking on the matter. Do you agree with him ? To me personally, success is courageously fighting for living according to one’s own values (for that you need to know what your own values are of course) in an environment that too easily wants to impose its own values on me. As a consequence, I am of course the only one to know whether I am successful or not. And that’s ok given that I will be the only one who cares about my life at the end of it. After all, there is no one at the end to count the beans. There is just me.
So reading Emerson’s definition of success, I wonder, are the points on his list HIS values ? A lot of them ring true for me, too. How about you ? Also check out the related article about How to achieve more by BEING rather than DOING.
What is Success ?To laugh often and love much;
To win the respect of intelligent persons and the affections of children;
To earn the approval of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty;
To find the best in others;
To give of one’s self without the slightest thought of return;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a rescued soul, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
To have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exaltation;
To know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived;
This is to have succeeded.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) was an American essayist, poet, and leader of the Transcendentalist movement in the early nineteenth century.
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