I once talked to a friend who said he was “never successful in anything.” He was an average man in all respects with dreams and ambitions like most humans. But he was not the only person I have heard talk this way. Quite a few people share the same sentiments about themselves. But little do these people know how wrong they are. The problem lies in how erroneously we have been taught by our parents, by society, and by oral tradition to measure success.
Success is not being that one in a million whose controls 95% of the city’s wealth, whose name is always in the press, and who is constantly under public scrutiny. Success is not deny your mind, body, and soul, its right share of God’s provision in earth to amass wealth, most of which you will never use. Success is not looking good at the expense of actually being and feeling good. Success is not heaping burdens on the backs of the poor in order to enrich yourself. Nor is doing evil to your fellow men in order to gain riches any part of success.
True success is enjoying your rightful share of God’s grandeur while allowing others to enjoy their share. It is about seeing your fellow human beings as a manifestation of God’s power, equal to you, and to treat them as your equal, not above or below. Success is enjoying a hearty meal and thanking God genuinely in your heart for the bounty that He has provided. Success is watching the beauty of a sunset with the utmost of peace and tranquility in your heart.
The greatest of success comes from doing to others. It comes from doing an act of kindness, for the sake of pleasing God, and not worldly glorification, and it comes from doing things for people that they will never be able to repay, and for which you will never require them to repay you or constantly thank you for the rest of their lives. True success comes from fulfilling your God-given duties to the best of your abilities, and not wanting more than you can use or handle.
More people are successful than they think they are because we view human success through a distorted lens. And even more people will become successful if they truly understand they true definition of success.
