what is the meaning of success essay

How Do You Define Success?

Meeting personal goals must determine the success of one's life..

Posted July 7, 2021 | Reviewed by Vanessa Lancaster

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While ideals are subjective, a chosen and fulfilling lifestyle with which others may disagree can be considered a success.
Our particular criteria for success will closely relate to our social, political, educational, and religious values—in a word, our ideology.
Most writers employ a business model in talking about success—a model that focuses as much on monetary worth as much as anything else.

Shad0wfall, photographer/Pixabay free image,CCO

Can you call yourself a success if the one thing you feel you’ve accomplished in life is marrying and having children? Or if, despite many failures, at least you avoided ending up on the streets? Or even if you did end up living on the street?

In the homeless instance, it’s unlikely you’d regard yourself as successful, particularly if you were reduced to begging others for loose change to purchase a burger—or beer. Still, it’s crucial to ask yourself who reserves final authority to judge the success of your existence?

And when you ponder this question, you’ll probably grasp that we all have our perspective on what makes a person successful. Further, our criteria will closely relate to our social, political, economic, educational, and religious values—or ideology. And inevitably, such ideals are subjective. Moreover, since people’s assessments of success are tied to their ideals, then it’s the unique experience of the person being evaluated whose “verdict” should be given the most weight.

That said, it must be admitted that the bulk of the popular literature on this subject—I’ve yet to find a single scholarly piece dealing with it—focuses almost exclusively on success criteria as derived from a business model. And this model has mostly to do with the number of one’s earnings or one’s accumulated wealth generally.

Seen more in a family context, success has routinely been estimated along the lines of how good a provider the individual has been for their spouse and children. Still, other writers talk about fame (or admiration) as much as fortune, while comparatively few talk about happiness . And if they do, it’s mostly about how material prosperity eventuates in happiness—a position undoubtedly open to debate.

This post, essentially existential in approach, will make the case that meeting one’s personal goals—whether others approve or not—must determine the (subjective) success of one’s life. At least theoretically, even a person who lives on the street, if consciously their overriding motive was to repudiate the conventions of various societal institutions, would have to be regarded as successful if their chosen lifestyle was somehow fulfilling to them.

Questioning Attempts to Clarify a Topic That Resists Definitive Categorizing

Merriam-Webster’s definition of success is relatively typical of how dictionaries characterize it. It’s indicative of just how subjective the concept is, and I’ll use it as an example of the term’s rich—but unresolvable—complexity.

For many, success means reaching a goal, accomplishing a task, or otherwise accomplishing what they set out to do–Essentially, something is a success when the outcome turns out well, is desirable, or is favorable. Beyond that, the definition of success is personal.

Note Merriam-Webster's hedging through twice employing the word “or.” By stating that “many” people see it in 1 of 3 ways, it extends its definition by talking about its possibly “turning out” in 1 of 3 ways. And then (suggesting it can’t really define it any more specifically) ends its description with the caveat above.

Note, too, that although most writers consider the ethical dimensions of success, Merriam-Webster avoids alluding to this facet, no doubt, because defining what’s meant here by “ethical” is also subjective and personal.

One’s moral system, that is, may not accord with others because they hold themselves to different guidelines and principles. And dictionaries lack the prerogative to make moral pronouncements independent of widespread usage.

Questioning Various Assumptions That Try to “Depersonalize” the Concept

One author , for example, asserts that success is achievable “when you try your best in all aspects of everything you do.” And that’s actually a position several writers take. But logically, why should anyone put maximum effort into doing something not exciting or important to them, or that they don’t care about and in no way are required to?

Perfectionism is hardly a coveted trait—it’s mostly a burden—and, too, it lacks any inherent relationship to people’s experiencing themselves as successful.

Writers generally have advanced their own biases about success, revealing a lot more about their values than making the abstraction tangible. Here’s but one example in a piece entitled “19 Definitions of Success You Should Never Ignore” (2021) . I won’t list all the 19 examples offered. Just a few will suffice for what I want to illustrate:

Success is always doing your best [ the most frequent criterion];
Success is having a place to call home;
Success is understanding the difference between need and want;
Success is believing you can (and this presumably will ensure your success—but I’d add that this position ignores the fact that, realistically, no one can do or be everything they wish);
Success is learning that you sometimes have to say no; and
Success is knowing your life is filled with abundance (the author’s idealism again, but try convincing someone living in poverty with seriously addicted, abusive parents).

Those who’ve written about success don’t discuss degrees of success. They see it as either present or absent (as they do failure). That orientation also oversimplifies—or overlooks—all involved in how a particular person feels about their achievements or what they believe constitutes those achievements.

Coming Up With Your Definition of Success

It’s vital to emphasize that their genetics and culture heavily influence a person’s notion of success. Consequently, their self-evaluation may not be truly authentic because it may not have resulted from thoughtful self-reflection or soul-searching.

Here’s an excellent example of a writer’s confessing that what she believed defined success was imbibed from messages implicit in our society:

For most of my life, I had a narrow definition of what success meant. It involved people knowing your name, and having enough money—i.e., lots of money—to buy an endless stream of designer handbags and big cars. It wasn’t a definition I had opted-in to, but [was] fed to me from childhood through films, magazines about celebrities, and our education system. And I swallowed it whole.

But to be true to yourself, vs. simply conforming to societal norms, what’s necessary is to discover what—given your inborn predilections, passions, and gifts—you want your life to center on. And then, evaluating how well you’ve accomplished your priorities will verify how successful you’ve been.

To put this somewhat differently, you could view yourself as successful but, in the eyes of the world, be seen as a dismal failure. And this discrepancy could just as quickly go in the opposite direction. Consider, for example, the many instances of distinguished celebrities’ taking their own life.

Yet as one Quora writer encapsulates it: “Living life on your terms and conditions is the most challenging task in the modern world [since] most people spend their entire life living on the terms and conditions of [others]. In his own (admittedly, somewhat exaggerated) words:

In their childhood, they live as their parents decide. In their schools, they live as their teachers decide. In their home, they live as their spouse decides. In their office, they live as their bosses decide. In their old age, they live as their children decide.

To conclude, despite the “terms and conditions” you may have internalized from your environment. Finally, you alone get to decide how successful you’ve been. And if you feel you haven’t lived up to your specified ideals, you also have the freedom (with or without professional help) to make new lifestyle choices that can transform how you see yourself.

Leon F. Seltzer, Ph.D. , is the author of Paradoxical Strategies in Psychotherapy and The Vision of Melville and Conrad . He holds doctorates in English and Psychology. As of mid-July 2024, Dr. Seltzer has published some 590 posts, which have received over 54 million views.

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Success: What Is Its True Meaning? Essay

Success. It is a word that means many things to different people. To me, the word means attaining things in life that I never thought would be possible for me or others to do. It is not something that can be physically seen but is rather a state of mind. This is because success can only be truly defined by a person in such a way that the word and his concept of the word fit his current status or situation. However, some people tend to define success more on the material definition of the word. For example, if a person is a doctor with a big house, an expensive car, and living what the others view as a luxurious life that they cannot afford to indulge in, then that doctor is a success.

In terms of word etymology, the word success was based upon the original Latin word successes that meant “an advance succession or happy outcome.” But the etymology for success does not end there. In reality, successes evolved from the word succedere. Succedere originally meant “come close after.” Due to the varied origins of the word, the closest historical account my research could show regarding the first use of the word could only date back to its first verbal use to the year 1586.

Although I believe that the word has varied meanings pertaining to the way it is applied, there is actually only one real meaning for the word that is accepted as its proper definition. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word in three ways. First, as “the accomplishment of an aim or purpose.” The second is ” the attainment of fame, wealth or social status.” Third, as a “person or thing that achieves success.”

From these definitions, we can deduce what the term “success” does not mean. It does not mean simply planning to accomplish something in life but never actually working towards achieving it. It is perhaps far simpler to explain that success is the opposite of failure—a word that means unsuccessful attempts to do things in life. Therefore, success should never be defined as half-hearted attempts to accomplish or achieve an end goal. It is either you achieve your goal and become a success, or you do not and become a failure. There is no middle ground in defining success.

Going back to my definition of the word, I firmly believe that success is a state of mind wherein a person sees the things he has done in his life and finds joy and happiness in its outcomes. Success can only be defined by the person who had to work hard to achieve his plans or defeat the obstacles in his path. It is achieving in life what you thought you could not and constantly pushing yourself self to discover your limitations in life.

A person must work hard to become a success because it is not something that a person is born into. Neither is it an inborn talent that just shows itself. I would like to present myself as a clear example of success. I came to this country with some plans in mind for myself to achieve, and I have worked hard to achieve some of them within the past two years. Do I define myself as a success even though not all my plans have been fulfilled? Yes, I do. I have worked hard to get to where I am today. That, in my opinion, is the true definition of success.

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IvyPanda. (2021, September 27). Success: What Is Its True Meaning? https://ivypanda.com/essays/success-what-is-its-true-meaning/

"Success: What Is Its True Meaning?" IvyPanda , 27 Sept. 2021, ivypanda.com/essays/success-what-is-its-true-meaning/.

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Success — What Does Success Mean To You

What Does Success Mean to You

Categories: Success

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Published: Mar 14, 2024

Words: 778 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

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