What is success? This is a question that is often asked and everybody generally has a different definition of success.
Today however I read an excellent description of success and I shared it on my Facebook wall.
“There is only one success – to be able to spend your life in your own way”
How good is that?
I think it is a fantastic definition of success and even though many people, including myself have used other measurements to determine success of failure I think that is a good one.
You see someone else asked me the other day how I ranked in % terms on the leader board for a service called 4Square, which is a great social media tool used to attract customers to a business.
At that moment I was 28th on the leader board and I thought hmmmmnot that good but then I thought about it in terms of what he had asked, as a percentage of my overall following and because I have over 1000 people following me on 4square it means I am actually in the top 0.03% of my peers on 4sq.
The top 0.03%….that’s actually awesome.
I started thinking about the other things I had accomplished, and I have been very successful in my life but I never thought about things in terms of in relation to a leader board.
Being in the top 1% of many things including New Zealand’s wealthiest people is a great accomplishment however if you consider it in terms of the saying “There is only one success – to be able to spend your life in your own way” is it really a success?
For me it was, but this does not mean everybody wants to be in the top 1% of wealthy people or the top 1% of social media people in New Zealand (in fact in some measurement sites I am either first or second and always in the top 5) and in fact your goals may be completely different however there is one thing that I do know about success and that is that without someone to help you along the way you will not do it alone.
I always had a coach, sometimes that coach was at home and was my mum or dad and sometimes that coach was many thousands of miles away and I only got to talk to them via phone back in the day, but one thing is for certain, I always had a coach.