Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.
MAYA ANGELOU
Success is Liking yourself
Success and failure are two overrated terms in the many books we come across. I often wonder if there was even an objective definition of these two words, it would give an enormous complex to a competitive person. Thank goodness, they take an objective scope!
Far too much importance is given to success and failure. If someone asks you a question – are you a successful person , my first response would be aah, ahem – I’m not quite sure – can you define success for me please?
Not because I don’t know what it means to be, but I’m so opinionated against being judged as an overconfident person – talk about complexities!
What is success or Failure?
In all honesty – what is this success and failure? We are all after a few goals and passions. True – we need and want something out of this life. It is a success if we get it and failure if we don’t!
But I love the way Maya Angelou portrays this definition – success is liking yourself. Success might also be a lot about your journey as well , it may be about what you’d like to achieve.
It is also about the changes you undergo as a person. But all through if you’re going through a process which makes you convinced and happy – perhaps that’s a definition which can make you happy. Quite simply we all do different things in our daily life. We can look at one big insurmountable goal and criticise ourselves as failure each day. This criticism is in the hope that it will motivate us to achieve better goals. Or looking within to assess what you want to do , how close you are to that and living an everyday success or failure.
The Choice
As always it comes to a choice between the different perspectives we choose. I suppose in this context the choice is of success in everyday perspective. Quite frankly I’d like that than limiting my life to one single success or failure. That makes life so boring !!
On that note, please leave your thoughts and comments on Maya Angelou’s quote below:
Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.
MAYA ANGELOU
I’ve also read something similar to what’s quoted here by Viktor Frankl, “Success and Happiness are things that shouldn’t be pursued but are things that follow a person who’s doing what s/he loves or loving s/he does” (This is not the exact quote). You’re right, success is more of a mindset than an object. It really depends on our personal definition of it, which also becomes irrelevant when we are busy doing what we like!
Thanks for sharing this quote Jayasurya – it is a very nice one :). Probably it is my age catching up (gosh I sound old :D ). I used to be so driven by these two words a couple of years ago. I have been in a mad rush to achieve the so called big success, the big bucks, marks, fame – you name it. But of late, I realise they are all pretty meaningless. We do things because it makes us feel good. Granted that there is a concept of striving to do something exciting, fun and creating a difference. But end of the day, it is pretty meaningless if it doesn’t make us happy.