“Success is a journey and not a destination” – John Maxwell
How do you define your success? I have spent some time preparing for my two upcoming mastermind group sessions – one online (now closed for registration) and live in Abuja, Nigeria. This has helped me the revisit the topic of success.
For a lot of people, success is about achieving set goals, making a lot of money, attaining a position, or a lifetime of community service. Another common way of rating your success is by comparing to your peers. This is especially common in Nigeria where there may be some unspoken benchmarks e.g. have a house in the best part of town, have the best cars, children in the most expensive schools, travel abroad for summer holidays etc. And these become unwritten standards that form the aspirations of many. The truth is if you tried to become just like one of those standards, you wouldn’t be successful.
One of the most common misunderstanding about success is that it’s the same as having money. A lot of people believe that if they accumulate wealth, they will be successful. But the truth is wealth does not bring contentment or success. I am sure you know of many extremely wealthy people who are dissatisfied and still want more wealth and /or very unhappy. Wealth and what it brings are at best fleeting.
Even Greek billionaire Aristotle Onassis, who retained his wealth and died at a ripe old age, recognized that money isn’t the same as success. He maintained that “after you reach a certain point, money becomes unimportant. What matters is success”. Of course, I am not advocating that we do not seek to be wealthy. You need to see my long dream list!
For a long time, I equated having a lot of money to being successful. This was especially when I looked back at when I was working as an International Senior Finance Consultant in my early to mid-twenties, globetrotting the world and earning significant amount of income.
I returned to Nigeria and started my second entrepreneurial pursuit and immediately employed and started pouring into my employees. I would always compare those ‘highflying’ times as my successful days as opposed to the current situation where I was barely breaking even. Surprisingly most times I felt fulfilled, and I would say to my self – “Nneka – look at your situation, why are you feeling so happy and yet no money in your account.” Little did I know that I was treading the path of success.
According to my friend and mentor – John Maxwell, the picture of success isn’t the same for any two people because we’re all created differently as unique individuals. After over thirty years of knowing successful people and studying the subject, he developed this definition of success:
Success is knowing your purpose in life, growing to reach your maximum potential, and sowing seeds that benefit others.
I love this definition! What do you think? What can you add or take away from it? You can by this definition see why success is a journey rather than a destination. No matter how long you live or what you decide to do in life, you will never exhaust your capacity to grow toward your potential or run out of opportunities to help others.
Another benefit of focusing on the journey of success instead of on arriving at a destination or achieving a goal is that you have the potential to become a success today. The very moment that you make the shift to finding your purpose, growing to your potential, and helping others, successful is something you are right now; not something you vaguely hope one day to be.
Question: How successful are you and what plans do you have to be even more successful?