Success: A yardstick of self or others

“Success” the word which everybody is looking for or rather to say everybody is running for. I always used to think on this word and on this line that what is success after all? But never thought to pen down on this. But today one of my students now colleague started a discussion on LinkedIn- What is the simplest definition of success? This provoked me to put my thought on the paper.
I don’t say that I am a legend like Stephen Covey or Robin Sharma or Marshal Goldsmith etc etc who understands the human psychology and have authority on saying something on these topics and that suits the majority of the environment too. But I have my own thought and Philosophy that I want to express. Similarly I have my own Philosophy on success.
For me success is the attainment of self desire. It is more of what I want to achieve in life, or to year down the line or 20 year down the line or may be two minute after now and attaining those goal and off course with my values (if one has). And in this way success leads to happiness. Success is the result and happiness is the reward effort employed. And happiness is more related to self realization of the result. So success should also be realized by self. But unfortunately sometimes or most of the time success is not realized by self but by others. We tend to define the success from others point of view. For example if somebody says success means having good reputation in society so he will feel himself successful if society respects him/her and at the same time for him/her all those person who have good reputation in society are successful. But this may or may not be the reality, as for few of them success may be the having good wealth not the reputation. So ideally it has to be defined by the self but we tend to look at society what they feel of us. Whether they feel -we are successful or not. And if this is the case we will have to define it from other’s point of view.
But I always use to think why have we given this yardstick to the society? Who is this society to decide that whether we are successful or not. I know I am happy at my home living with my parents even if I do not have any great opportunity to work on, but then why am I running for money, reputation, designation, luxury which will not make me available to my family? Is this because I want to be called as successful by the society even if I am not from my heart? Or is this the case is that we have camouflaged our definition of success with society’s definition of success? These are the question which one must asked him/her before calling themselves successful.
It takes lots of guts to define success against all these odds and that is why we prefer to be called as a successful by society than asking self.
Have a successful life……….