The narrow definition of what it means to be successful in life causes a lot of suffering. The broader we make the definition of success, this suffering reduces. It is not because the definition of success is weakened, but because breadth captures more truth and more life. This does not mean defining everything or anything as success, but what are considered as successes need to be diverse and take on as many unique forms as the humans who populate the planet. Each has their potential to be successful in their own way.
Success is not found in exclusivity and shallowness of its definition. No matter how appetizing these are, they are in fact serve as the opposite: distractions, hinderances to the progression of success, snuffing out vital life energy of many before their lives begin. Forcing oneself to fit into a narrow definition of success is highly sought as the panacea to unhappiness, but it is one of the greatest causes of unhappiness. It is one of the surest ways to not find success, because they are blanket assumptions of what success is rather than what than what it can possibly look like. The first is decided idea, and the second is an ever-evolving understanding based on continued life experience.
Society’s perceptions of success stunt personal growth by reducing the wealth of what can be considered meaningful human experiences: the varied ways a human story can be told rather than to be reduced to singular narrative, the depth a human story can go without superficial examination. It is the refusal of the deeper, more challenging, less tangible—but ultimately more rewarding work—of introspection and getting to know oneself at an individual level through personal experience and reflection on one’s life. We become afraid to truly reflect on what will be meaningful success to us, so it is easy to give into society’s expectations of it. The success of a meaningful and worthwhile life lies beyond society’s echo chamber of canned stories of what life should be, meant for rapid and thoughtless consumption. These rehearsed ideas only make the world lifeless, dim, and vapid.
Mainstream cultures and every subculture will have their own versions of success, and even subcultures that reject mainstream values will have their own version of what it means to be successful in their own worlds. Though different kinds of cultures can be helpers in self-understanding and self-awareness, they can very much be hinderances too, even if they seem to closely define us. Since each of us are unique individuals, there either will come a time we no longer fit into a schema of success defined by a culture and we start to feel lost and out of place, or there will come a time when the pathway to success becomes too smooth that we no longer really reflect and see who we are as individuals, merging with a cultural ideal blindly. The second option is not necessarily better than the first.
Even good models of success have limitations: well-written stories that tell nuanced versions of the hero’s journey in the form of movies, shows, and books are still generalizations about life. Though you can read and be moved by a sophisticated comeback story that is deeper than society’s shallow expectation of straightforward success or is deeper than the typically bland and canned comeback story, it cannot tell you the whole truth of your life. Like culture, even great stories are general models, which serve as both helpers and hinderances for our lives: a great story may enrich us with a lot of depth, but if we attach to it too strongly, it can become an appetizing detour away from discovering our own paths of success for ourselves. Ultimately, we need to create our own story and understanding of our lives.
Success is not a perfect, predetermined ideal image of what should be, or a clear guidebook of life that lays down a certain path with minimal nuances or changes to its formula. True success will more likely go a spiral path, with times of action and times of reflection, times of getting stuck and times of moving forward into a different direction—success lies in the (very murky) process. It likely involves periods of really wanting to give up, and even of giving up, but if we continue to recommit and persevere in both action and reflection, we will discover our own paths of success, regardless of where we are in life. Everyone’s unique path of success will spiral and shift in wholly varied and distinct patterns and directions from one another—but that is the beauty of the human experience.
