How do you define success? There are two ways to define it. One is business and one is personal. A business way to define success is by how much money you have in your bank account. The personal way to define success is how many people you love genuinely love you back.
There are many more ways than the above to define success. When I was younger and in college, the only success that I wanted was to make the most amount of money that I can. That’s how I viewed success. By acquiring wealth more than the person next to me.
Oh, how little I knew. Now I know better. I know that that’s only one tiny subset of success that you can achieve. Personal successes are just as valuable as business successes of having a lot of money to play around with.
Although I do have aspirations of becoming a billionaire, I refuse to become one unless I take care of personal goals along the way. There are some things in life that are way more important than money. Some things can’t be bought because it’s not for sale. When people ask me, “how do you define success?” I never ever respond with money.
After all, money is easy. There are zero limits and caps to how much money I can potentially acquire. There is a limit on how much time that I actually have on this Earth. The below video clearly outlines the difference of how inconsequential money can be at the end of your life. How to waste your life and never be happy.
Money is a very good business goal to strive towards but it is never a good personal goal to strive towards.
How Do You Define Success?
Think to yourself. How do you define success? I bet there are numerous ways you define success. It’s completely normal. In fact, there are infinite ways to define it. A chess player could define success by becoming a grandmaster. A book author can define success as having published a best selling book.
Because there is an infinite amount of passions and goals in the world to conquer, there are an infinite number of ways to define success.
One way to answer the question how do you define success is by SMASHING that social share button and post to your favorite social media for your friends to be more knowledgable! Aside from helping your friends out with their success goals, we can also help the Google algorithm as well. All hail the Google algorithm.
Just kidding. Anyways, think about your answer to the question above. There are no right or wrong answers to the question. It’s completely based on your own personal preferences, passions, and life goals. Does money and status fall into your definition? That’s completely fine.
Because there are an infinite number of ways to define success, I outline 11 great success definitions for you to ponder, supplement, or even change the goals that you are trying to achieve. I’ve certainly changed some of my goals as I enter different stages of life and as my priorities change.
Status and how people viewed me used to bother me quite often. It’s not that I should succeed, it’s that others should fail while I succeed. Boy, am I glad that I no longer have that mindset. Other people’s successes holds zero bearing on my own successes.
Whenever my friends are successful, instead of comparing myself to others, I congratulate and celebrate with them on their successes.
11 Definitions of Success
So with that said, let’s go into 11 great ways to answer the question “how do you define success?”
1) Success is When You Have a Roof Over Your Head
There are 553,000 homeless people in the United States on a given night as of 2018. That’s in the richest country on Earth. Think about that. Imagine what the homeless numbers are in different parts of the world. Easily in the millions, if not in the tens of millions.
If you just have a roof over your head and a home to go to, you are successful. Be proud of it. These things that can be taken for granted are not accessible to hundreds of thousands of people in the United States, alone. Home is where the heart is.
Food and shelter are one of the most basic necessities that we need to survive and keep going on with our lives. Providing shelter and food for you and your family is a great successful feat to accomplish.
2) Success is When You are Making Progress Towards Your Goals
The progress towards your goal can be towards anything that you want. Psychologically, we gravitate to our number one need, which is self actualization. The way to feel self actualization is for you to be excellent in the fields you are passionate about.
Even if you aren’t passionate about it but it’s just a long time life goal, that’s completely good to make progress towards. I’m not entirely passionate about having a lot of money in the bank account. However, it is still a life goal that I have. To prove to myself and to you that it can absolutely be done.
Protect your precious goals and dreams and leave the world a better place than how you found it. It’s something worth to keep getting out of bed every morning and fight towards getting there. It won’t be easy but it will be worthwhile.
3) Success is When You Have People in Your Corner
When the people you love end up loving you back, that’s a great definition of success. So many rich people will die without having anyone attend their funeral. Not even their family, spouse, kids, or grandchildren. While it doesn’t really matter because they would be already gone, it’s still not good.
It means that no one actually cared about that person. All the money in the world can’t buy loyalty. That’s not how loyalty works. While they may have had a lot of business connections, they didn’t have a lot of people who genuinely loved them. The ones who were willing to stick by their side through thick and thin.
When you have people who are genuinely in your corner, you’re in the right track. So many people have friends who are silently waiting to backstab them. That’s not a good spot to be in. That’s not the right definition of success.
4) Success is When You Love the Person in the Mirror
There are many lawyers who are rich but can’t stand to look at what they’ve become. The lawyers who defend criminals even though they believe their client is guilty. The money keeps rolling in but their sense of pride and feeling good about themselves is gone.
Maybe they tell themselves that it’s only temporary. How they’ll only do it for three to five years before they move on to more charitable work that provides more value to society. Maybe they will. However, most don’t resist boatloads of the money dangling in front of them.
Just as they are about to quit, there’s something or someone who offers them more and they get sucked right back to where they started. More money rolls in but their soul isn’t theirs anymore. If you feel the opposite of that, then that’s a great way to define success.
When you can feel good about the person that’s right in front of you in the mirror, you’ve achieved success.
5) Success is When You Give Life Everything You’ve Got
Life is difficult. Nothing ever seems to come easy because good things aren’t handed out on a silver platter. We have limited resources in the world and competition is fierce to get it. In order to go and achieve your dreams, you have to work harder than the next person to get it.
When you give life everything you’ve got, then that’s the definition of success. Whether you received results is outside of your control. As long as you put in the effort to get the results that you want and at least tried and attempted to get what you want, you’ve succeeded.
Effort requires no skill. There’s no excuses that you should make that prevents you from giving life everything you’ve got.
6) Success is Embracing the Haters
When you stand up for something you feel is right, you will have haters. If you lived a life without any enemies, you lived a life completely for others. The nicest person in the world has haters. Did you know that there is a hate group designed specifically to bash on Roger Federer?
Federer does have dark sides but he’s one of the nicest people ever. However, he doesn’t let his haters bother him. He is at peace with the haters. Even the shiniest jewelry will have haters if they don’t even like jewelry in the first place. Recognize that success is when you have haters.
Your work doesn’t resonate with 100% of the people out there and it never should. In fact, when you have haters, it means you’re doing a good thing. People are paying attention to what you are trying to create.
7) Success is Resisting Temptation
There are indulgences that everyone gives in to every now and then. Mine is food. When there is decadent food right in front of me, I will reach out and grab it even if I am full. It’s difficult for me to resist the temptation. However, I am still great at resisting temptation when I need to.
That is a good way to define success. When you resist the temptations and vices that are right in front of you, you are in control of your own self. No one else is driving the decisions that you are making, you are the one in the driver’s seat. There’s no subliminal messaging that can mess with your decision making process.
Success is when you can genuinely resist your urges and wants. Delayed gratification is a powerful force to be reckoned with.
8) Success is Standing Up for Yourself
As a minority of the minorities, I was picked on and bullied on often in elementary and high school. They would notice all of the differences between myself and the majority and use it against me. I ignored and brushed it off but looking back, I wish I did something else.
Go to the principal or contact the police and press charges of harassment if I could. I was so young and I didn’t know any better. These days, no more. I refuse to be bullied. If someone owes me something, I sue them for it. I won my case against a big insurance company without hiring a lawyer when they owed me the money.
People will walk all over you if you let them walk all over you. People will look for people to walk all over and assess who their next target should be. Humans are self-interested beings, so you have to protect yourself.
9) Success is Having Passions in Your Life
When you look forward to each new day with passion and life, then you are on the path to success. Even if you don’t have a lot of money in the bank, you have passions that are keeping you afloat. Define success through how much fire and passion you have in your heart.
At the end of the day, if your life isn’t fulfilled, then you’ve already lost. You’re going through the motions and hoping something sticks. You’re not living, you’re just existing. That’s not success. That’s just passing time until things happen to you. You have to make it happen by putting in the effort.
This goes in line with giving life everything you’ve got. The feeling of being alive will never be bad.
10) Success is Letting Go of Pride and Ego
Pride is the enemy of success. I am so glad I learned this lesson early on in life. The school of hard knocks isn’t kind to the prideful person. Even if you think you are special, there’s someone out there who’s achieved far better things than you at a younger age. Knowing that is a great way to keep you humble.
How many times did you think that stock pick would return millions of dollars in a year? There is no way that you could be wrong, right? Pride and ego makes you invest your own self into the decision making process. That adds another useless variable in achieving success and goals.
Whether you look foolish or great, who cares? What matters is if you were foolish or great. Sure, others may give you a hard time if you look foolish. As long as you don’t let that bother you, then it’s completely fine. Success is when you let go of pride and ego. It doesn’t do much for you.
11) Success is Minimizing Regrets
One overlooked way to define success is to minimize your regrets on your deathbed. Are you certain that you lived your life to the fullest potential? We regret the things that we didn’t do more than the things that we did do. You only have one life, what are you going to do with it?
There’s no need to do amazing and grandiose things that everyone else wants to emulate. You can just live a life where you see interesting things and meet interesting people before you pass away. That’s success as well. However, what’s important is how do you define success?
Are you fine with that? If you are, then that’s great and there’s more power to you. However, make sure to genuinely and truly evaluate what will make you regret your life 30 or 40 years from now. You don’t want to waste the one precious gift that you’ve been given. It’s more valuable than anything else in the entire world.
Now it’s Your Turn. How Do You Define Success?
There are 11 great definitions of success that I outlined for you. Did your mind change from when I first asked how do you define success? Did you get to add additional items to that list? If so, then that is fantastic. If not, that’s good too. The homework is to define success yourself and figure out what works for you.
We all have our different paths in life. Some life paths are grouped more similarly than others. Others have a completely different life trajectory and destination they want to get to. When you answer that question, you start to have purpose and meaning in your life.
Success can be defined an infinite number of ways but there are a finite number of good definitions to choose from. Having the most amount of money in the world can be exciting for the brief moment that you achieve that impossible feat. After that temporary feeling of accomplishment, what will be leftover are your friends.
Your personal connections and the relationships. Did you sacrifice all of them in the pursuit of your goal? I’ve actually done this to a couple of my friends. I fully know and acknowledge that I did it. However, some still stuck by me through it all. I am proud to call them my best friends and I won’t forget that if I ever get to a good position.
The meaning to success is an important question that people don’t sit down and actually think about. Take some time to ponder and reflect what you actually, truly want out of life. Otherwise, you’ll one day wake up and wonder where all of that time went.
So now, it’s your turn. How do you define success?
11 Definition of Success List:
- Success is when you have a roof over your head
- Success is when you are making progress towards your goals
- Success is when you have people in your corner
- Success is when you love the person int he mirror
- Success is when you give life everything you’ve got
- Success is when you embrace the haters
- Success is resisting temptations
- Success is standing up for yourself
- Success is having passions in your life
- Success is letting go of pride and ego
- Success is minimizing regrets
Hi David,
I loved your list! Especially #s 3, 4, 10, and 11. I have very few regrets in life, and I’m grateful for that. Instead of “regretting” something, I try to either 1) learn from it or 2) try to fix it (if I can). #6 was very thought provoking for me-I’ll have to reflect on that some more.
What I love about your post is that most of your list (except maybe #1) doesn’t revolve around money.
Success to me is being healthy physically, mentally, and emotionally! All the best!
Dragon Gal
Thank you so much for stopping by!!!!! It means a lot.
I like that there was a thought provoking point in there! And I agree, money is a necessary part of life but it’s not really included in the realm of success.
Health is a very good goal to strive towards, mentally, emotionally, and physically. It’s great that the personal finance community prioritizes this above all else.