true success is abstract, not material

How do you define success for yourself?

This is a key question that we all need to answer at some point in our lives. And the sooner we do this, the better it is for us.

Most of us get trapped by social conditioning and start believing that success is all about having great wealth, supercool cars, a loving family, taking vacations at gorgeous locations, and wearing pricey clothes and accessories. These are all wonderful things to have, don’t get me wrong, but an important truth that a majority of us don’t know is that success transcends material possessions and desires. In other words, success always trumps stuff.

Success is not about what you have or how much you have. Success is about how you feel. Success is satisfaction. Success is balance. Success is abstract and it can’t be confined by the material possessions that we have with us.

You may be the richest person in your country or even the world, but if you don’t feel satisfied in your mind, if your pursuits don’t bring you joy, if your life is out of balance, if you feel insecure, if peace of mind seems a far away destination, and if you hardly get to experience the tranquility within, then you’re not successful by any means.

True success is a feeling, not something that’s tangible. And that’s where most of us go wrong. Measure your success by your own standards, not by others’. You are the only one responsible for the way you define your success, and you have to hold yourself accountable every single day. In this material world, success is deemed as something extrinsic, but true success is always intrinsic. The external manifestation of material objects and possessions is just a byproduct of it.

As Gaur Gopal Das writes in his book Life’s Amazing Secrets, “We tend to take everyone at face value, equating what they have on the outside to how they feel on the inside. The paradox of our times is that those who have the most can often be the least satisfied. We have mastered how to look successful, but not how to organize our lives so that we feel successful.”