You Have the Wrong Conception of Real Big Success (1)
By: Nsang Rudolf Nchanji
Tags: Success, Integrity, Service, Impact, Leadership

While growing up I hoped for the time to come when I would be successful, and like myself, every other person hopes to become successful someday. Though, what success may mean to each individual is the question. I have probed this question to a good number of people at different times and in different places, from different careers, social and educational strata and at every instance, I have gotten dissimilar ripostes. It is hilarious to know that 90% of the answers I have often caught ascribe success to some material stuff. Well, that’s how a cross-section of the world sees success. But, is there a better definition of success? The answer is Yes!

Real Big Success?

The better definition of success lies on the tongue of every wise individual. Even though everyone has a personalized definition for success such as earning a great salary, building a great family and so on, there is a conception every aspiring youth must have. It will not be polite for me to vehemently say circumference a very elastic word like success in a single definition. Rather, I have the duty to say what success should look like, and then you customize a description for it.

Problems set in when you allow the world to define what success is for you. For this reason, every young entrepreneur has the right to reflect and write down their own definition of real, big success, even before they get to the top of the ladder. A great writer, Andrey Sergeyev, says “YOU need to define what success means to YOU because if you don’t do it, somebody else will define it for you.”

You go wrong when you have the wrong conception of success, a real big success. Many young people grow up having big dreams like becoming a doctor, engineer or pilot. Some even dream bigger as becoming an internationally acclaimed prophet; becoming a head of state or settling as an entrepreneur. Whatever the dream be, research shows that many grow up with the conception that occupying a high office or earning a great salary is SUCCESS. This is the reason why almost every young person who started some petit business nowadays added CEO to their name. Today, almost every young person wishes to start up a business or some organization just for the sake of genuinely bearing the titles of Founder/ CEO.

Note that it is cumbersome to say, categorically, what success is defined. No one can impose their version of success on everybody, just like no one can tell us what it means to live a good life. It’s easy to assume that success means obtaining a specific object, such as a job or social status, and to believe that if we get this thing or that thing, we’ll be successful.

But, though success is relative, the believe that occupying a prestigious position or having much money or great property means SUCCESS is wrong. There are people who own mighty businesses and great mansions; people who have enough money to feed your entire neighborhood for years, but, according to them, they are not successful. Among other items, a real successful man has enough to take care of his needs and the people around him; he is happy, peaceful, caring and supportive. If these qualities are nowhere to be found in that man or woman you think is successful, then they are not yet successful at all. That person could be you, — the young man or woman hoping to change the world for the better.

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