I don’t think success can be measured. I think success is defined by your expectations, aspirations, and attitudes towards reaching them. I also don’t think success is ever an end result, because no one ever reaches a junction and decides to stop trying. That seems to be the way of things. It’s rather like evolution.
Because success can’t really be measured, it is also difficult to compare. For example, a beginner motorcyclist might not ride as proficiently as the professional next to him, but he’s getting out there and living the dream of learning. To him, this is success. To the professional, the beginner’s performance might be considered a failure. I think success is subjective.
Today’s education system will tell you otherwise. It will teach you to prioritize goals and ideals other than your own, which seems backwards in a world where success is subjective to the person pursuing it.
For example, Jane is an avid illustrator and fills her schoolbooks with drawings whenever the teacher isn’t looking. Jane does this because she knows the education system has an agenda for her that she does not want. If Jane’s teacher were to catch her drawing in class, she would be punished in front of her classmates and encouraged to believe that her own goals are of no value and should be discarded. Not only is Jane’s freethinking and self-identity now jeopardized, but she is now at risk of discarding what is important to her and never achieving her own success. If Jane were to leave the classroom and walk into a publisher interested in her work, her teacher and education would systematically deem her a failure.
One size doesn’t fit all because success is different for everyone. It’s funny how the world seems backwards sometimes.
Great success for Pakistan
ISLAMABAD: The issue of mandatory screening of Pakistanis at American airports has been addressed successfully, Foreign Minster Shah Mahmood Qureshi said on Saturday. “Today US congresswoman Sheila Jackson and American Ambassador Anne Patterson told me that America has decided to take back its decision of screening all Pakistanis,” Qureshi told a private news channel. He said God had enabled him to address the grievances of the people of Pakistan who faced problems at US airports. “It’s a great success and the government will give the nation more such good news,” he added. He said he was leaving for Saudi Arabia on Friday on the invitation of the Saudi government. Qureshi said a comprehensive agenda, covering relations between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, would be discussed. “Pakistan’s vision to strengthen bilateral relations and the visits of the Indian prime minister and Afghan president to the Kingdom will also be discussed,” he said.
Which Traits Predict Success?
What are the causes of success? At first glance, the answer is easy: success is about talent. It’s about being able to do something – hit a baseball, play chess, trade stocks, write a blog – better than most anyone else. That’s a fine answer, but it immediately invites another question: What is talent? How did that person get so good at hitting a baseball or trading stocks? For a long time, talent seemed to be about inheritance, about the blessed set of genes that gave rise to some particular skill. Einstein had the physics gene, Beethoven had the symphony gene, and Tiger Woods (at least until his car crash) had the golf swing gene. The corollary, of course, is that you and I can’t become chess grandmasters, or composers, or golf pros, simply because we don’t have the necessary anatomy. Endless hours of hard work won’t compensate for our biological limitations. When fate was handing out skill, we got screwed.
In recent years, however, the pendulum has shifted. It turns out that the intrinsic nature of talent is overrated – our genes don’t confer specific gifts. (There is, for instance, no PGA gene.) This has led many researchers, such as K. Anders Ericsson, to argue that talent is really about deliberate practice, about putting in those 10,000 hours of intense training (plus or minus a few thousand hours). Beethoven wasn’t born Beethoven – he had to work damn hard to become Beethoven. As Ericsson wrote in his influential review article “The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance”: “The differences between expert performers and normal adults are not immutable, that is, due to genetically prescribed talent. Instead, these differences reflect a life-long period of deliberate effort to improve performance.”
That’s interesting, right? Talent is about practice. Talent takes effort. Talent requires a good coach. But these answers only raise more questions. What, for instance, allows someone to practice for so long? Why are some people so much better at deliberate practice? If talent is about hard work, then what factors influence how hard we can work?
The ability to ask these questions, to peel away layers of explanation, is one of the reasons I’m drawn to the psychological sciences. And this leads me to one of my favorite recent papers, “Deliberate Practice Spells Success: Why Grittier Competitors Triumph at the National Spelling Bee.” The research, published this month in the journal of Social Psychological and Personality Science, was led by Angela Duckworth, a psychologist at Penn. (Anders-Ericsson is senior author.) The psychologists were interested in the set of traits that allowed kids to practice deliberately. Their data set consisted of 190 participants in the Scripps National Spelling Bee, a competition that requires thousands of hours of practice. After all, there are no natural born spellers.
The first thing Duckworth, et. al. discovered is that deliberate practice works. Those kids who spent more time in deliberate practice mode – this involved studying and memorizing words while alone, often on note cards – performed much better at the competition than those children who were quizzed by others or engaged in leisure reading. The bad news is that deliberate practice isn’t fun and was consistently rated as the least enjoyable form of self-improvement. Nevertheless, as spellers gain experience, they devote increasing amounts of time to deliberate practice. This suggests that even twelve year olds realize that this is what makes them better, that success isn’t easy.
But that still begs the question: Why were some kids better at drilling themselves with note cards? What explained this variation in hours devoted to deliberate practice? After analyzing the data, Duckworth discovered the importance of a psychological trait known as grit. In previous papers, Duckworth has demonstrated that grit can be reliably measured with a short survey that measures consistency of passions (e.g., ‘‘I have been obsessed with a certain idea or project for a short time but later lost interest’’) and consistency of effort (e.g., ‘‘Setbacks don’t discourage me’’) over time using a 5-point scale. Not surprisingly, those with grit are more single-minded about their goals – they tend to get obsessed with certain activities – and also more likely to persist in the face of struggle and failure. Woody Allen famously declared that “Eighty percent of success is showing up”. Grit is what allows you show up again and again. Here are the scientists:
Our major findings in this investigation are as follows: Deliberate practice—operationally defined in the current investigation as the solitary study of word spellings and origins—was a better predictor of National Spelling Bee performance than either being quizzed by others or engaging in leisure reading. With each year of additional preparation, spellers devoted an increasing proportion of their preparation time to deliberate practice, despite rating the experience of such activities as more effortful and less enjoyable than the alternative preparation activities. Grittier spellers engaged in deliberate practice more so than their less gritty counterparts, and hours of deliberate practice fully mediated the prospective association between grit and spelling performance.
There are two interesting takeaways from this study. The first is that there’s a major contradiction between how we measure talent and the causes of talent. In general, we measure talent using tests of maximal performance. Think, for instance, of the NFL Combine: Players perform in short bursts (40 yard dash, short IQ test, catching drills, etc.) under conditions of high motivation. The purpose of the event is to see what players are capable of, to determine the scope of their potential. The problem with these tests, however, is that the real world doesn’t resemble the NFL Combine. Instead, success in the real world depends on sustained performance, on being able to work hard at practice, and spend the weekend studying the playbook, and reviewing hours of game tape. Those are all versions of deliberate practice, and our ability to engage in such useful exercises largely depends on levels of grit. The problem, of course, is that grit can’t be measured in a single afternoon on a single field. (By definition, it’s a metric of personality that involves long periods of time.) The end result is that our flawed beliefs about talent have led to flawed tests of talent. Perhaps that explains why there is no “consistent statistical relationship between combine tests and professional football performance.” We need to a test that measures how likely people are to show up, not just how they perform once there.
The second takeaway involves the growing recognition of “non-cognitive” skills like grit and self-control. While such traits have little or nothing to do with intelligence (as measured by IQ scores), they often explain a larger share of individual variation when it comes to life success. It doesn’t matter if one is looking at retention rates at West Point or teacher performance within the Teach for America program or success in the spelling bee: Factors like grit are often the most predictive variables of real world performance. Thomas Edison was right: even genius is mostly just perspiration.
Taken together, these studies suggest that our most important talent is having a talent for working hard, for practicing even when practice isn’t fun. It’s about putting in the hours when we’d rather be watching TV, or drilling ourselves with notecards filled with obscure words instead of getting quizzed by a friend. Success is never easy. That’s why talent requires grit.
How do you define success? What is a successful life to you?
I’m embarrassed to say that my immediate answer was money. Then I thought about it much more and came up with seven areas of my life that now are attributed to my successful life.
In no particular order:
Relationships. Family, friends, spouse, children, coworkers. How are your relationships? Do you have loving people in your life? Do you have people who you enjoy spending time with? Do you have a support group who is there for the good times and the bad?
Fun. What are your hobbies? What do you enjoy doing for fun? Are you artistic? Love the outdoors? Athletic? A writer? Do have enough fun in your life?
Health. Do you feel good? How are your energy levels? Do you eat nutritious meals? Do you cook at home more than eat out? Do you exercise regularly? Do you participate in exercise you enjoy?
Finances. Do I have enough money to live simply? What can I do to make more money to have the lifestyle I want? Do I only see myself as successful based on how much money I have?
Ambition. Are you working towards your goals? Do you have goals? Do you want to accomplish things in your life? This can be anything: a career, climbing a mountain, or raising a family.
Balance. Do you balance all of these areas of life together? Is one area lacking? Is one area given too much attention? Think about what you want more and less of in your life. Nothing has to be split equally. It is up to you to figure out your priorities.
Self-fulfillment. Are you happy? Are you where you want to be in life? Are you creating the balance you want? Are you happy with who you are and who you can be? Are you making a difference in the world?
I concentrate on these areas of my life to define my success. It is different for everyone.
Definition of Success
An editor for a success magazine wanted to know my views on success. Here is what I wrote back:
Most people think success is a goal. I do not. I see success as a process. Most people define success only in terms of money. I do not. I think success is a combination of things -- health, happiness, material prosperity, love of family and friends, wisdom, influence, and fulfillment.
Here is how I know someone is successful -- If you are able to give from your abundance then you are successful. If you are able to donate money, spread happiness, inspire health, propagate love, share knowledge, motivate people, etc. then you are successful.
Most people think you need to work hard to achieve success. I do not think that is true. I believe the opposite is true. I believe you have to learn how to avoid work to be successful. I define work this way -- if you'd rather be doing something else, then you are working.
You avoid work by loving what you do. Loving what you do is infinitely more powerful in achieving success than all the hard work in the world. If you love what you do, Nature will show you her secrets. When Nature reveals her secrets to you, you have the golden key to being successful. Those secrets are the formulas for working less yet accomplishing more. For example, you can strain your muscles working hard to move a big rock or you can use one of Nature's secrets and use a lever. When you use a lever you work much less but you accomplish much more.
People who say they work hard are really saying they are not smart enough or creative enough or lucky enough to have found an easier, more effective way to accomplish what they want. Hard work is not the answer. Finding an easier, more effective solution is the answer. To find the easier solution, you need to be alert for a lazier way. People who work hard don't have the time or the energy or inclination to find that easier way.
A dictionary can give you a definition of success, but real success is only determined by you.
Hitler succeeded in storming across Europe, Napoleon succeeded too, Al Capone, Sam Giancanna, John Gotti, and others succeeded in becoming crime king pins. Stalin succeeded in murdering millions of his own people, Jeffery Dahmer succeeded in being a warped, psychopathic serial killer. Imelda Marcos succeeded in owning the worlds largest shoe collection. Are any of these people a success?
Jesus Christ and Martin Luther King succeeded in getting themselves killed. Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Theresa were dirt poor. Dr. Frederick Banting and Dr. Alexander Flemming saved millions of people with their medical breakthroughs. Are any of these people a success? Did they hold success secrets?
The dictionary definition gives a very basic definition that provides a good place to work from but a dictionary definition is inadequate to provide a platform to base a life on. The dictionary simply states that success is achieving a goal and usually a goal of finance or power. But be careful is financial success real success? Howard Hughes was one of the richest men alive, yet the latter part of his life was spent as a paranoid recluse. More recently, Yasser Arafat - a man who had political power and close to a billion dollars at his disposal -- at the end of his life his achievements were nothing more than being the master mind of countless murders and possibly dying of AIDS.
Your definition of Success
Success is, without question, achieving a goal. But your goal must be a worthy one. Some of the people listed above are true successes in spite of their ignoble ends. Jesus Christ was murdered after 3 years of preaching, teaching and doing miracles, but within a hundred years of his death his 'good news' had spread across the known world. Martin Luther King was murdered before he saw the results of his efforts to bring about civil rights for the oppressed in the USA. Both of these men were huge successes.
Mahatma Gandhi freed India from the British Empire - without an army. Dr. Banting discovered insulin and Dr. Flemming discovered penicillin. Huge successes.
What will your definition of success be? It could be a career goal, maintaining good health, spiritual attainment, emotional, use of time, or finance. The list is much longer than this and can include just about anything. You are going to have to dig very deep inside yourself and do some serious soul searching to discover what success means to you.
In the list of names at the very top of this page there are some very notorious, infamous mad men. In their own eyes they were a success. In the eyes of the rest of the world they are nothing more than criminals who are not worthy of being members of the human race. Your definition of success must be a worthy one. Is it positive? Does it contribute something to others? Is it noble? Is it just? Is it moral?
When you are willing to sacrifice integrity to attain a goal, you might very well attain that goal but you will not be a success.
Because success can’t really be measured, it is also difficult to compare. For example, a beginner motorcyclist might not ride as proficiently as the professional next to him, but he’s getting out there and living the dream of learning. To him, this is success. To the professional, the beginner’s performance might be considered a failure. I think success is subjective.
Today’s education system will tell you otherwise. It will teach you to prioritize goals and ideals other than your own, which seems backwards in a world where success is subjective to the person pursuing it.
For example, Jane is an avid illustrator and fills her schoolbooks with drawings whenever the teacher isn’t looking. Jane does this because she knows the education system has an agenda for her that she does not want. If Jane’s teacher were to catch her drawing in class, she would be punished in front of her classmates and encouraged to believe that her own goals are of no value and should be discarded. Not only is Jane’s freethinking and self-identity now jeopardized, but she is now at risk of discarding what is important to her and never achieving her own success. If Jane were to leave the classroom and walk into a publisher interested in her work, her teacher and education would systematically deem her a failure.
One size doesn’t fit all because success is different for everyone. It’s funny how the world seems backwards sometimes.
Great success for Pakistan
ISLAMABAD: The issue of mandatory screening of Pakistanis at American airports has been addressed successfully, Foreign Minster Shah Mahmood Qureshi said on Saturday. “Today US congresswoman Sheila Jackson and American Ambassador Anne Patterson told me that America has decided to take back its decision of screening all Pakistanis,” Qureshi told a private news channel. He said God had enabled him to address the grievances of the people of Pakistan who faced problems at US airports. “It’s a great success and the government will give the nation more such good news,” he added. He said he was leaving for Saudi Arabia on Friday on the invitation of the Saudi government. Qureshi said a comprehensive agenda, covering relations between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, would be discussed. “Pakistan’s vision to strengthen bilateral relations and the visits of the Indian prime minister and Afghan president to the Kingdom will also be discussed,” he said.
Which Traits Predict Success?
What are the causes of success? At first glance, the answer is easy: success is about talent. It’s about being able to do something – hit a baseball, play chess, trade stocks, write a blog – better than most anyone else. That’s a fine answer, but it immediately invites another question: What is talent? How did that person get so good at hitting a baseball or trading stocks? For a long time, talent seemed to be about inheritance, about the blessed set of genes that gave rise to some particular skill. Einstein had the physics gene, Beethoven had the symphony gene, and Tiger Woods (at least until his car crash) had the golf swing gene. The corollary, of course, is that you and I can’t become chess grandmasters, or composers, or golf pros, simply because we don’t have the necessary anatomy. Endless hours of hard work won’t compensate for our biological limitations. When fate was handing out skill, we got screwed.
In recent years, however, the pendulum has shifted. It turns out that the intrinsic nature of talent is overrated – our genes don’t confer specific gifts. (There is, for instance, no PGA gene.) This has led many researchers, such as K. Anders Ericsson, to argue that talent is really about deliberate practice, about putting in those 10,000 hours of intense training (plus or minus a few thousand hours). Beethoven wasn’t born Beethoven – he had to work damn hard to become Beethoven. As Ericsson wrote in his influential review article “The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance”: “The differences between expert performers and normal adults are not immutable, that is, due to genetically prescribed talent. Instead, these differences reflect a life-long period of deliberate effort to improve performance.”
That’s interesting, right? Talent is about practice. Talent takes effort. Talent requires a good coach. But these answers only raise more questions. What, for instance, allows someone to practice for so long? Why are some people so much better at deliberate practice? If talent is about hard work, then what factors influence how hard we can work?
The ability to ask these questions, to peel away layers of explanation, is one of the reasons I’m drawn to the psychological sciences. And this leads me to one of my favorite recent papers, “Deliberate Practice Spells Success: Why Grittier Competitors Triumph at the National Spelling Bee.” The research, published this month in the journal of Social Psychological and Personality Science, was led by Angela Duckworth, a psychologist at Penn. (Anders-Ericsson is senior author.) The psychologists were interested in the set of traits that allowed kids to practice deliberately. Their data set consisted of 190 participants in the Scripps National Spelling Bee, a competition that requires thousands of hours of practice. After all, there are no natural born spellers.
The first thing Duckworth, et. al. discovered is that deliberate practice works. Those kids who spent more time in deliberate practice mode – this involved studying and memorizing words while alone, often on note cards – performed much better at the competition than those children who were quizzed by others or engaged in leisure reading. The bad news is that deliberate practice isn’t fun and was consistently rated as the least enjoyable form of self-improvement. Nevertheless, as spellers gain experience, they devote increasing amounts of time to deliberate practice. This suggests that even twelve year olds realize that this is what makes them better, that success isn’t easy.
But that still begs the question: Why were some kids better at drilling themselves with note cards? What explained this variation in hours devoted to deliberate practice? After analyzing the data, Duckworth discovered the importance of a psychological trait known as grit. In previous papers, Duckworth has demonstrated that grit can be reliably measured with a short survey that measures consistency of passions (e.g., ‘‘I have been obsessed with a certain idea or project for a short time but later lost interest’’) and consistency of effort (e.g., ‘‘Setbacks don’t discourage me’’) over time using a 5-point scale. Not surprisingly, those with grit are more single-minded about their goals – they tend to get obsessed with certain activities – and also more likely to persist in the face of struggle and failure. Woody Allen famously declared that “Eighty percent of success is showing up”. Grit is what allows you show up again and again. Here are the scientists:
Our major findings in this investigation are as follows: Deliberate practice—operationally defined in the current investigation as the solitary study of word spellings and origins—was a better predictor of National Spelling Bee performance than either being quizzed by others or engaging in leisure reading. With each year of additional preparation, spellers devoted an increasing proportion of their preparation time to deliberate practice, despite rating the experience of such activities as more effortful and less enjoyable than the alternative preparation activities. Grittier spellers engaged in deliberate practice more so than their less gritty counterparts, and hours of deliberate practice fully mediated the prospective association between grit and spelling performance.
There are two interesting takeaways from this study. The first is that there’s a major contradiction between how we measure talent and the causes of talent. In general, we measure talent using tests of maximal performance. Think, for instance, of the NFL Combine: Players perform in short bursts (40 yard dash, short IQ test, catching drills, etc.) under conditions of high motivation. The purpose of the event is to see what players are capable of, to determine the scope of their potential. The problem with these tests, however, is that the real world doesn’t resemble the NFL Combine. Instead, success in the real world depends on sustained performance, on being able to work hard at practice, and spend the weekend studying the playbook, and reviewing hours of game tape. Those are all versions of deliberate practice, and our ability to engage in such useful exercises largely depends on levels of grit. The problem, of course, is that grit can’t be measured in a single afternoon on a single field. (By definition, it’s a metric of personality that involves long periods of time.) The end result is that our flawed beliefs about talent have led to flawed tests of talent. Perhaps that explains why there is no “consistent statistical relationship between combine tests and professional football performance.” We need to a test that measures how likely people are to show up, not just how they perform once there.
The second takeaway involves the growing recognition of “non-cognitive” skills like grit and self-control. While such traits have little or nothing to do with intelligence (as measured by IQ scores), they often explain a larger share of individual variation when it comes to life success. It doesn’t matter if one is looking at retention rates at West Point or teacher performance within the Teach for America program or success in the spelling bee: Factors like grit are often the most predictive variables of real world performance. Thomas Edison was right: even genius is mostly just perspiration.
Taken together, these studies suggest that our most important talent is having a talent for working hard, for practicing even when practice isn’t fun. It’s about putting in the hours when we’d rather be watching TV, or drilling ourselves with notecards filled with obscure words instead of getting quizzed by a friend. Success is never easy. That’s why talent requires grit.
How do you define success? What is a successful life to you?
I’m embarrassed to say that my immediate answer was money. Then I thought about it much more and came up with seven areas of my life that now are attributed to my successful life.
In no particular order:
Relationships. Family, friends, spouse, children, coworkers. How are your relationships? Do you have loving people in your life? Do you have people who you enjoy spending time with? Do you have a support group who is there for the good times and the bad?
Fun. What are your hobbies? What do you enjoy doing for fun? Are you artistic? Love the outdoors? Athletic? A writer? Do have enough fun in your life?
Health. Do you feel good? How are your energy levels? Do you eat nutritious meals? Do you cook at home more than eat out? Do you exercise regularly? Do you participate in exercise you enjoy?
Finances. Do I have enough money to live simply? What can I do to make more money to have the lifestyle I want? Do I only see myself as successful based on how much money I have?
Ambition. Are you working towards your goals? Do you have goals? Do you want to accomplish things in your life? This can be anything: a career, climbing a mountain, or raising a family.
Balance. Do you balance all of these areas of life together? Is one area lacking? Is one area given too much attention? Think about what you want more and less of in your life. Nothing has to be split equally. It is up to you to figure out your priorities.
Self-fulfillment. Are you happy? Are you where you want to be in life? Are you creating the balance you want? Are you happy with who you are and who you can be? Are you making a difference in the world?
I concentrate on these areas of my life to define my success. It is different for everyone.
Definition of Success
An editor for a success magazine wanted to know my views on success. Here is what I wrote back:
Most people think success is a goal. I do not. I see success as a process. Most people define success only in terms of money. I do not. I think success is a combination of things -- health, happiness, material prosperity, love of family and friends, wisdom, influence, and fulfillment.
Here is how I know someone is successful -- If you are able to give from your abundance then you are successful. If you are able to donate money, spread happiness, inspire health, propagate love, share knowledge, motivate people, etc. then you are successful.
Most people think you need to work hard to achieve success. I do not think that is true. I believe the opposite is true. I believe you have to learn how to avoid work to be successful. I define work this way -- if you'd rather be doing something else, then you are working.
You avoid work by loving what you do. Loving what you do is infinitely more powerful in achieving success than all the hard work in the world. If you love what you do, Nature will show you her secrets. When Nature reveals her secrets to you, you have the golden key to being successful. Those secrets are the formulas for working less yet accomplishing more. For example, you can strain your muscles working hard to move a big rock or you can use one of Nature's secrets and use a lever. When you use a lever you work much less but you accomplish much more.
People who say they work hard are really saying they are not smart enough or creative enough or lucky enough to have found an easier, more effective way to accomplish what they want. Hard work is not the answer. Finding an easier, more effective solution is the answer. To find the easier solution, you need to be alert for a lazier way. People who work hard don't have the time or the energy or inclination to find that easier way.
A dictionary can give you a definition of success, but real success is only determined by you.
Hitler succeeded in storming across Europe, Napoleon succeeded too, Al Capone, Sam Giancanna, John Gotti, and others succeeded in becoming crime king pins. Stalin succeeded in murdering millions of his own people, Jeffery Dahmer succeeded in being a warped, psychopathic serial killer. Imelda Marcos succeeded in owning the worlds largest shoe collection. Are any of these people a success?
Jesus Christ and Martin Luther King succeeded in getting themselves killed. Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Theresa were dirt poor. Dr. Frederick Banting and Dr. Alexander Flemming saved millions of people with their medical breakthroughs. Are any of these people a success? Did they hold success secrets?
The dictionary definition gives a very basic definition that provides a good place to work from but a dictionary definition is inadequate to provide a platform to base a life on. The dictionary simply states that success is achieving a goal and usually a goal of finance or power. But be careful is financial success real success? Howard Hughes was one of the richest men alive, yet the latter part of his life was spent as a paranoid recluse. More recently, Yasser Arafat - a man who had political power and close to a billion dollars at his disposal -- at the end of his life his achievements were nothing more than being the master mind of countless murders and possibly dying of AIDS.
Your definition of Success
Success is, without question, achieving a goal. But your goal must be a worthy one. Some of the people listed above are true successes in spite of their ignoble ends. Jesus Christ was murdered after 3 years of preaching, teaching and doing miracles, but within a hundred years of his death his 'good news' had spread across the known world. Martin Luther King was murdered before he saw the results of his efforts to bring about civil rights for the oppressed in the USA. Both of these men were huge successes.
Mahatma Gandhi freed India from the British Empire - without an army. Dr. Banting discovered insulin and Dr. Flemming discovered penicillin. Huge successes.
What will your definition of success be? It could be a career goal, maintaining good health, spiritual attainment, emotional, use of time, or finance. The list is much longer than this and can include just about anything. You are going to have to dig very deep inside yourself and do some serious soul searching to discover what success means to you.
In the list of names at the very top of this page there are some very notorious, infamous mad men. In their own eyes they were a success. In the eyes of the rest of the world they are nothing more than criminals who are not worthy of being members of the human race. Your definition of success must be a worthy one. Is it positive? Does it contribute something to others? Is it noble? Is it just? Is it moral?
When you are willing to sacrifice integrity to attain a goal, you might very well attain that goal but you will not be a success.
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