Exploring the Multifaceted Notions of Success

1. Introduction to the Concept of Success

Success, we will find, is a many-splendoured thing. Most management books tell us that we will never be satisfied until we succeed. Many of our myths spell out a direct line between hubris and nemesis. Even our dictionaries define success as the attainment of a desired end. These ends and these definitions vary. If one examines a list of the 400 million Web pages that feature “success”, one may feel satisfied at first. The use of this word is variational depending on what one reads. Thus millions of words cannot tell us what it is or how to attain this abstract noun that is highly relative depending on who one asks. Even so, we do need to be able to pool the knowledge that is already available worldwide about the many different ways in which people do describe or define success. Doing so may help us to understand this complex issue of life skills in many different cultures. Additionally, our story-bearers, the media, television, music, drama and cinema, are regularly employed to carry our truth and our ideals from one micro-culture to another. When we ask which definitions of success are true or good, we cannot avoid asking how we personally can and do define success. While we often call chess a game and life a game, are there as many definitions of success as there are chess players and games? Do the definitions used by the world’s top chess players meet against those of extreme skateboarders, fashion models and life scientists?

This complex world has many cultures each with its own language, and within each of these languages there are more than 30 separate disciplines which have more or less different words for success. Each of these has important research and truths. The international management and life-skills industry is starting to examine whether women and minority groups, who represent at least sixty per cent of the world’s population, have been treated equally by these micro-cultures. A pluricultural persona is comfortable in at least two of these ways. Our many micro-cultures offer the very different “rubrics of creative differences” of teachers and researchers in our similarly plural universities. The values upon which success is based or the achievement of those values in one’s culture are worthy goals and have been shown to be related to higher levels of wellness. It is not surprising that the most individualistic cultures offer the smallest range of ways to feel successful. All of these left-wing attributes are related to Eq, which is the fundamental economic philosophy that rage is advocating. Collectivist subjects were satisfied in their personal achievement when their groups were also perceived as successful. The real problem if you are a subject in an experiment on personal viewpoints of individual established norms is unlike your individualistic counterparts, your answers will vary. Items on sub-scales that measure more concrete and superficial forms of success explain more of the variance between Western and non-Western cultures.

Each person is able to define success in the myriad ways of their different “life games”. Whilst “Life is a game,” we are the players as well as the games themselves. All of these definitions, no matter how diverse and complex, are true and acceptable ones to hold at the personal and societal levels provided that in the search for success as a personal value one does not infringe on another’s right to find success in their respective ways, whatever they be. The last point is possible only when philosophy, politics and economy do not control the society below. Success can be analyzed hierarchically from values and personal beliefs to multifaceted ideas of such abstraction as your living. These same varying levels are reflected in the classification of the general systems theory which is said to be multidimensional. Some argue that being alive is sufficient for one to be a successful person. This paper attempts to provide a clearer picture of its many deep, personal and broad social attainments of life.

2. Cultural Perspectives on Success

In a discourse dominated by success, the concept is assumed to be universally accepted and understood without any explicit definition. Most of the research on the topic posits that success is ambiguous, elusive, and multi-dimensional, assuming countless definitions according to differing cultural backgrounds, age, gender, profession, even major of study – clearly an allele of social values, norms, and goals. In the next two sections, success will be tackled from different points of view: its relation to culture and society and term; its plurality that makes it impossible to be connoted uniquely – how key concepts of Western society, such as capitalism, individualism, and liberalism, have shaped the contemporary conception and values of success.

A more relatable way of understanding success’ subjectivity, or rather multifold persona, is to explore the relation it has with societies and their respective cultures. The societal expectations and received norms not only influence the communities’ and individual’s interpretation of success but also the way it is pursued and concretized in concrete acts. Thus, in order to properly discuss the meaning and accomplishment of success one must acknowledge the cultural context they are addressing. Gathering such information can also be useful to assess if people of particular cultures feel more allied to or relatable when discussing the same – or a different – standard of success.

3. Personal Definitions and Goals

This is where the multifaceted nature of success comes in most powerfully. It’s important to consider what success means to you, personally. Is it getting high grades or obtaining a diploma? Or is it earning the respect of your peers or gaining valuable knowledge in a certain area? All of these are perfectly valid answers depending on your individual goals. After all, if you don’t set the definition of success for your own life, you’ll end up living by the definition of others. Instead, work to set goals that feel right to you. Draw from the definitions we’ve discussed to compile a set of personal values and goals, as well as a broader, societal set of values and goals (which will be discussed in the next section). Only then will you be able to actively “dream” work towards what you are seeking in life.

Realistically, by the way, the definitions we will examine in this section will often be the terms that you’re familiar with yourself; you will often, in other words, “think” like these definitions present themselves. Hopefully, you will begin to view your life in a niched, broader, and trend-based way by the time you finish engaging in this area. Maybe you’ve always wanted to be a superstar in the field of medicine. Regardless, it’s likely that you will have at least one personal ambition that already coincides with one of the following universal viewpoints.

4. Measuring Success: Beyond Traditional Metrics

It’s easy to think of success in terms of traditional sociodemographic indicators: money, power, career accomplishment, social status, and high self-esteem. However, these material and social accomplishments have significant downsides and don’t allow for the nuanced perspective success requires. In order to successfully measure success, we must look beyond traditional sociodemographic indicators. These indicators are simply too broad and varied to allow us to truly understand the concept of success. Instead, it can be helpful to think of a person’s ability to reach their goals in terms like: “Currently am I accomplishing what I want? Will my goals be met in the future? How happy am I?” We should consider the following points:

How people define what makes their lives worth living and personally fulfilling. What gives life meaning—what endows it with value and worth? The ways in which living a life that is not defined as good—in other words, how the absence of a good life manifests—reveals what is important about the good life. Because people’s values are socially and culturally determined, the “worthwhileness” of an individual’s life will reference these culturally specific moral norms. The most useful way of capturing worthwhileness may be changing what we capture from “quality of life” to what people value. If the goal of assessing worthwhileness is to guide policy attention and resources, then valuation may provide the most information. Full attention must be given to Amartya Sen’s message: “The issues are not of one set ‘really important’ and a second set of merely ‘complementary’ concerns about people’s lives, but rather centrally important questions on which policy has to make value judgments.” It is important not to abstract people’s lives from the judgments they are making about them as that would strip the issue of relevance and importance. It may be more acceptable to capture the normative aspect by asking what kind of life people actually live or affirmatively want, such as “What is a good life according to people?” It is clearer from an ethical point of view as to how positive valuation findings should be used in political or policy decision-making. To make positive valuation findings ethically tenable, it is necessary that people have a comprehensive view of what makes our lives worth living. Even the stated philosophy of the World Health Organization in the field of mental health, which advocates “the good life,” is built around material living standards. What people feel and do is often at odds with the “good life”—happiness may not entail or rest upon the material accumulation or attainment of “stuff.” There is a trade-off between health, family, and friends. Wealth may not augment one’s happiness. If the “exceptional” becomes the expectation, net “goods” may not emerge. Given the emphasis in the literature and policy circles on well-being, “it is arguably a good time to reflect on whether this approach informs, or is informed by, conventional policy.” Maybe the commitment to well-being will lead to an expansion of motivations informing, and aspirations underpinning, policy actions. This new sense of good may assist policy in addressing a multiplicity of targets. Simply, “well-being” as a vision may accommodate or counteract “lifestyle,” “economic,” and citizen- or human rights “utopianism.” Our preoccupation with governmental harm ratings encouraged exploring other measures of good rather than harm. Moreover, “life as a positive measure for ‘well-being’ can, and should, compensate for the insufficiency that public perceptions of harms alone entail.” Thus, an exploration of existing measures hopes to identify the characteristics of the good life. Generally, “good” refers to what evokes approval, exemplifies qualities of “excellence, desirability,” and manifests “integrity, competence, vitality,” or any sign of “well-being, well-off, and comfort.” Younger people have this quality of goodness—by being exempt from alcohol-related diseases—an adversary commodity.

5. Challenges and Pitfalls in Pursuit of Success

More often than not, our lives aren’t stable but volatile, never moving in a straight line but marked more by a series of unpredictable ebbs and flows. It’s typical for people to be faced with unexpected difficulties and confusing choices in their pursuits, as luck, immanent about, sometimes intervenes at crucial moments. Not just these, success breeds a new set of problems, many of which are entirely emotional.

For instance, there are ‘choices’ to be made – whether to settle or compete, to quit or not give up, etc. – involving potential losses and other worrying consequences. Dealing with failures and setbacks as one attempts to accomplish something significant and worthwhile, picking ourselves up after missing out on prize or rewards that felt rightfully ours, can prove to be heartbreaking. The baroness Meadon once wrote: ‘circumstances do not make the man; they merely reveal him to himself.’ In other words, adversity doesn’t just sift privileged, our backgrounds, but the purely confused from the hardy and serious-minded. Those seaworthy types of course eventually win the first prize, and make it look entirely inevitable; yet fundamentally what distinguishes them is a robustness of soul. Even those who achieve renown may not live happily thereafter, recognised by their peers but insecure and directionless on the inside.

It’s difficult to talk about success without recognising the problems that affect the workers and aspirants of the world. In priority we have the challenges in order to stand a chance in the job market, advances in technology and practically-excessive expectations of consistency. From there and beyond, the inclusion of narcissistic tendencies in ‘Generation Me’, admitted by the millennials themselves, and the competitiveness forced upon the general population by the lottery of birth. That possibly speaks none as much to the concept of success as it does the opposite that we have a masochistic streak, seeking from watching other people have break downs and laughstock. We have idolised and gossiped about them. We grow fearful of the average, the ‘normal’ as it manifests as enough. Even in succeeding, there is fear of stagnation, of becoming the object of schadenfreude. Success can indeed be a burden in and of itself.