What Is Success

WHAT IS SUCCESS?

Expanding The Target So You Can See It Better

By Bill Cottringer

"Success is not adding things to your arsenal bag; it is emptying the bag until there isn't anything else unimportant to get rid of."

Note:  This article is dedicated to the International Association of Dive Rescue Specialists. The divers and the association have figured out what success and making a difference really means. My hat is off to them all. They are a remarkable group of people.

     The self-help, inspirational and business sections of bookstores are now over-loaded with books on the topic of success. And when you do a Google search on the keyword "success" you get 554 million hits! Interestingly, the definition of success is rapidly changing. Consider this seemingly overnight evolution:

• Common, neutral, impersonal dictionary definition = The achievement of something intended.
• Animated personal application = Defeating doom, gloom, drama, and trauma with a system to stake your claim to fame with impressive wealth, power, popularity and influence.
• Current, softer, global direction = Finding purpose and meaning, being thoughtful, and using passionate action to make a difference in helping the world to become a better place (and also ending up with all the perks from the previous definition).

     Now the speed at which the success gurus and publishers have led us from the middle to the current definition of success, has set up a possible paradox: We are supposed to give up living our more personal attempt to survive and achieve, which most of us haven't yet mastered, to start thriving in doing a higher good which we may not fully understand. Don't fret though, I have an answer, being a middleman broker in these sorts of things.

     Sometimes ideas themselves have enormous consequences. Such is the case with how you define something like success, happiness, meaning, purpose and thoughtfulness, and even power, wealth, popularity and influence. As it turns out, the way you put your personal spin on these things helps determine how much or how little of the things you have, apart from the effort you put into getting them. Applying this idea in an unusual way can be a catalyst of taking more of us from just surviving to thriving. In looking at success maybe we should be finding ways to bring the finish line closer, while still running as fast as we can to finish the race.

     And maybe the way I can move my own finish line closer is to become more thoughtful and act more passionately on my own purpose and meaning—to translate the wisdom of all the rich and famous success gurus into practical consumption for the ordinary rest of us. To do this I may have to get out of my own way and stop listening to myself and start doing the talking.

     I seem to make more progress at being successful—having a certain sense of satisfaction in knowing I am making a difference—by paying closer attention to notice what I have been failing to notice. What I have failed to notice includes:

• The lessons of my failures.
• What I don't know.
• How my impatience delays success.
• Unusual relationships between things.
• How I am my own worst enemy.
• The simple 5% important truths hidden in the 95% BS nonsense.
• And the big one—How to do the right thing in the right way for the right reasons to get the right results.

     Noticing these few things has led me to adopt a more humble personal definition of success. Consider the enormous potential of this more instant view of success:

     "Making your best effort in whatever you are doing right now, whether it is talking, listening, being a friend, conducting training, managing, being a parent, socializing or having fun, to improve the situation a little better than when you came upon it." I like this definition because it fits with one of my favorite sayings—"Take care of the seconds and then the minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years will take care of themselves." Of course a not-so-insignificant side effect can come out of this approach; you will start managing your most important resource better, having more time to have more fun getting more done! And that is a grand slam homerun with any definition of success you may want to adopt.  

     How can you redefine success and other important things you want, to have more of them, or better yet help others do that too?  Who's kidding who here—you are already redefining what success means to you because that is what we are all doing, in our own way and on our own time schedule. Sometimes we just have trouble finding the words to say that. In the end, we all see that the gap between where we are and where we think we want to be gets shorter and shorter over the years. That is not laziness, but wisdom of the ages

     In the meantime, our only really concern is to know the things we can control, so we can get on with doing something positive about them and quit worrying about all the uncontrollables that preoccupy us and keep us from being as successful as we can be.