A World Around the Word - 'Success'

     I woke up with a start. Outside, the night had still not lifted its dark veil yet, the birds had not started chirping yet, and I lay wide awake in my bed. It is often said that when you have your mind set on achieving something, day and night that’s the only thing you can think of. It doesn’t let you sleep, doesn’t let you waste a single moment of your time frolicking around, and makes you feel guilty if you do something that isn’t in line with this goal of yours. And what follows your relentless efforts is something we all know as ‘success’.

     Now, the dictionary meaning of ‘success’ is ‘the accomplishment of an aim or purpose’, ‘the attainment of fame, wealth, or social status’ and a lot of other tautologies. But in fact, it originated in the mid-16th century: from the Latin word successus, from the verb succedere which means 'come close after'. So, success is more or less, an outcome. That means, whether you consider an outcome successful or not is relative. What is success for me isn’t necessarily ‘success’ for others. And what others may think is success, might be a great failure according to me.

     So it was this ‘drive’ to achieve success that woke me up in the middle of the night. Or so it may seem. Was it a presentation, a project submission or an exam today? I couldn’t recollect. May be neither. But I’d like to think that it’s my motivation that woke me up in the wee hours of the morning. But a few days earlier, what I learnt in class, shocked me. What I thought was motivation was actually tension. Tension to perform, tension to get a return on the efforts I’d invested, tension to maintain my reputation among my peers; and all that I was doing, was coping with this tension, every single day, with the hope that one day, the world would see me succeed like no one ever has before. And that reduced me to a people pleaser, someone who cared more about what the world thinks about his success than what he himself thinks.

     Once I got this whole tension trap, I decided to get out of it. We learnt in class that in order to stop jumping from one tension to another, we need to create a tension that we actually want to have. That confused me all the more. Why would anyone want any tension at all? But then, something hit me. Often, when we think we’ve succeeded, we attribute it to our hard work, to our perseverance, to our determination; but God forbid if we fail, we isolate ourselves socially and run straight to the temple. So the question lies here, whom do we trust exactly? If we think our successes are a result of our efforts, why don’t we have the same faith when a little failure comes our way? Why do we hope that God will make everything alright? Fools hope, Geniuses have faith. That’s where I found the tension I really wanted – whom do I trust – myself or God? As disturbing and vague as it sounds, it’s made things a lot easier for me.

     The meaning of success thus changed for me. I realised that it isn’t directly proportional to the efforts we undertake, and the more we think about it, the worse we feel. It is our unanswered questions that leave us restless and prevent us from concentrating where we want. And possibly the last thing we should do to face this issue is to create some fake positive feeling about it. No use of any coping mechanism there, it only leaves us deluded and in a state of denial.

     So how do I make sure I succeed in the field I have chosen? Speaking of my field, I think it’s the best one I could’ve chosen to succeed. Here successes and failures can be measured by revenue, profit and market share, and whatever you do before the outcome is considered to be the reason for the success or failure. As a marketer, it is my responsibility to follow the exploratory approach to marketing and lead the consumer on a path to self-discovery. It is my job not to exploit his guilt but to take it off completely. It is my obligation to make sure that the products I offer are challenging for everyone. After all, ‘good’ products are passé.

     But to come up with such products, to understand the consumer’s psyche, I have to understand my own personality. I have to recognise that what I think is my personality is actually not I am. In fact, whatever traits I have now are a result of a defence mechanism that I have formed to tackle my insecurities. My real self has been suppressed by my inner defence mechanism, and that’s why I have been struggling and not getting the success I have worked for. Criticism and appreciation both have crafted my personality and influenced my choices. And the attitude that I have thus formed has shaped the view I have towards the world. I have realised that the more you massage someone’s ego, the better they behave with you, and that’s how you get your work done. And a lot of times, I find myself doing the same, and working towards pleasing people to get my job done.

     Thus, my motivation has given me tensions that have built my personality, and I must bridge the gap between my actual self-image and ideal self-image, and my social self-image and ideal social self-image in order to find my real self. For this, I need to understand perception, and the fact that the ‘space’ is in the construct of language, that reality is nothing but the most agreed upon perception, and consequently communicate in a way that would address everyone in a way to suit the reality they have constructed.

     In order to succeed I need to stop using my past knowledge to tackle present problems, which will help me get new experiences and translate my knowledge into a learning. Learning only comes out of incidents and their experience that leaves a physical impact on us, in which we take an action. This is how reflex actions are formed. Thus, every move of mine will be an outcome of my learning and not just knowledge. For this, I must skip the ‘understanding’ stage and head on to get the learning, and ultimately develop the skill to be able to tell a person’s motivation, personality, perception and attitude on knowing any one of the four.

     I have realised the disadvantages of advantages and the advantages of disadvantages, and how I can use them in order to achieve my goal. The tension I have created has reduced that ever-existing throb in my head and has helped me to think clearly and rationally, albeit I still need some more honing of that skill when it comes to emotional matters. I have been observing people close to me and have formed some guesses about their real selves from the purchases they make. This has laid the foundation for my marketing career, wherein I will make products that give people a sense of achievement!