How Do You Define Success? May 2006
“Success needs to be redefined. This is because if you read the definition of success in the dictionary, it sounds like it was written for sociopaths.” With this bon mot Stewart Emery, co-author on a soon to be published book about successful individuals, challenges more than Webster. He tosses down the gauntlet to our society and challenges us to redefine for ourselves what success means.
Since beginning our study of greatness in August 2001, we find ourselves continually uncovering societal concepts of success and greatness that impede the individual’s ability to move toward personal greatness. Sometimes subtle, often overt, these concepts seduce people into believing that monetary gain or tangible assets are either the means to the end, or are an end themselves. They lead people away from internal development or outward connection to the larger community. Many of us have internalized these ideas without realizing that we’ve done so. As a result, we often feel conflicted between higher values and the societal demands that we define ourselves by what we have. Perhaps it’s time to define what we seek.
Mark Thompson and Stewart Emery, who have researched successful individuals for the past 10 years, will soon release their findings in the book, Success Built to Last. In an interview with Knowledge@Wharton they challenged dictionary definitions of success because, as Emery notes, “If you go to Oxford or Webster ? whether you take a dictionary from either side of the Atlantic ? they define success in the same way, as the accumulation of influence, power, wealth and accolades. We see a lot of people chasing that kind of success.”
What Thompson and Emery discovered resonates with what we’ve learned while studying greatness. Emery put it this way, “A lot of people are experiencing incredible success. Although they don’t think about it per se, they have rich lives and they are having an impact that will probably benefit the world way beyond their lifetime. The traditional definition of success doesn’t fit their lives at all.”
By understanding what we really think success means and perhaps redefining it, we can move toward our own personal greatness. We, however, are not challenging Webster and Oxford, although Thompson and Emery suggest we do. Instead, we offer this as a personal challenge for you to understand what your goals are by asking if the definition of success fits your personal belief system. If it doesn’t, you might consider redefining it for yourself!
Emery and Thompson offer their idea of success, not in a definition but in three fundamental principles that their interviewees suggested lead to success. According to Thompson, these three do not stand alone, but interact with and play off each other: meaning, thought, and action. Thompson offers this clarification, “We found that individuals across the spectrum of professions were striving to find something that mattered to them in a very fundamental way. This prompted them to drive their thoughts to frame a way of producing those results ? and then acting on those results.”
If what we think drives what we do, how do you define success?
The Greatness ProjectTM is researched and written by:
Scott Asalone & Jan Sparrow
Copyright © ASGMC, Inc. 2006