Success

I was reading through facebook updates today and a good friend of mine posed this question: how do you define success? At first I did not think much of it because he always poses these rhetorical questions as his status updates, but then I started thinking...

Though that is a loaded question with multiple right answers for me at least, I have a few answers.

1. Joy. I like to be and I try to be a joyful person. Joy is simply a deeper, more fulfilling type of happiness in my opinion. If we are not joyful in our lives then I believe we will struggle through our daily tasks and life will be much more miserable. I try to find joy in all that I do, be it school, work, being a husband or being a dad.

2. Contentment. Being content runs parallel along with being joyful, but they are different. Often times, I think people are so content in their jobs, family life, or church and they get caught in a rut; they are not progressing nor subsiding. However, this is not to say that we should continually be discontent, but rather we should be content and concurrently try to improve upon our current situations. Again, contentment is a deeper type of feeling.

3. Love. If I feel loved and am loving, then I feel as though I'm being successful. I'm speaking about my personal faith and my family first and foremost. But further, I believe that people need to feel loved in their workplace and in other endeavors. Humans have a general need to be loved. God made Adam and Eve to be companions, this was not a coincidence. Obviously, there are quite a few different types of love: friendship, brotherly love, intimate love, and simply liking a particular thing - but all these forms have a place in our lives. I believe they all work together to satisfy our need for love.

4. Money. I saved this for last because the world would put this first. Making money (and a lot of it) does show some form of success, but this is not always the case. There are many rich people in this world that have inherited wealth; does this mean they are successful? Stat of the day - almost 2/3 of the world's billionaires are self-made. This is an insane stat. In other words, you don't have to inherit wealth to be wealthy. Hard work does in fact pay off. I love reading the stories of self-made millionaires/billionaires, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, H.J. Heinz, Tiger Woods, Mark Cuban, Mark Zuckerberg and many others. But, I digress... I have a desire to make enough money to 1) support my family and 2) save for my children and grandchildren, and 3) give to others. If I'm making enough money in my vocation to do that then I will feel like I'm successful - at least in this realm.

In sum, success is a nebulous word which invites a complicated definition. Your definition of success may be different, but these are some principles that I use to help me define my success (and I may be missing a few things).