Measuring your success in life is not about showing how much better you are than another person. Discuss

[StrawberryBeret]

Is this a reasonable statement to make do you think?

I don't think it is because I think that on the whole society generally measures "success" in terms of what people achieve in terms of tangible or material things and that inevitable involved making comparisons with others.

To illustrate, you can say all day long that Richard Branson is no better than you are (and he probably isn't) but society will always view him as more successful simply because he has more money than you do.

i spose there are achievements too.... some people spend their lives doing very selfless things for charity.... i see them as a better person than myself.

Whether they realise it not, people do compare how well they are doing compared to others. You are more likely to be contented with your lot of you come out relatively favourably as compared to those you regard as your peers.

In other words, it is generally better to be a big fish in a small pond than a small fish in a big pond, even if materially the small fish has more worldly goods than the big fish in absolute terms.

Success is having what you want.

Happiness is wanting what you have.

Success means different things to different people.

One person might feel successful because they have a beautiful child.

Another might feel successful because they got that sought after promotion.

I don't think it can be or should be measured against another person.

I guess its also about what you see as successful eg what type of thing. Is money success? Is family success? Is career success? Is it tangible? What about the opposite - have they failed? Are you meant to be successful in everything to be sucessful? Does how hard you have worked to achieve it measure success or just the outcome?

It depends what your goals are. Some people want to succeed in roles that are hard to come by and are selected for by competition, while other people want a role that is open to most people, in which case they don't need to measure their success, or chances of success, against other people.

Success in life comes from not giving a toss what other people have or do.

Is it, in fact, wrong to even want to measure success? Unless you find it hard to see the good in your life, why would you need to measure yourself against an artificial yardstick?

"Success is having what you want.

Happiness is wanting what you have."

I really like this.