Defining Success

By Tunde Oseni

Success is a relative term. It means different things to different people. Nevertheless, we all know successful people when we see them. According to The Pocket Oxford Dictionary (e-version), success means ‘accomplishment of an aim; favourable outcome; attainment of wealth, fame, or position’. People admire success and society rewards it. Simply, to me, success is what you achieve as a result of a calculated effort. This is what I mean: you succeed when you set a goal and meet it.

 

Let us begin with the story of a ‘skinny kid with a funny name’ who attempted to give life a shot with the hope that his country had a place for him too. Barack Obama overcame the stereotype of being born by a white mother, who later died of cancer, and a black father, who he truly never knew. He was raised by his maternal grandparents in Honolulu in the State of Hawaii and went to college with the full hope of making it despite odds. Barack studied Political Science at the Columbia University, worked as a ‘community organizer’ in the Southside of Chicago and went to read Law at Harvard University where he rose to become the first black President of the venerated Harvard Law Review. Barack then became an attorney, elected a state senator, appointed an adjunct professor, and then elected as a national senator, and eventually the first man of his skin colour to become the President of the United States of America. That is success.

 

Now, success is not just about becoming a president or a governor or being awarded a Nobel Laureate. Success comes in different garbs, colours and sizes. At times success may connote such a simple achievement as getting one’s dream job. For instance, one of my friends, Chukwuemeka Fred Agbata Jnr., now CEO of CFA Leverage, shared with us how elated he became after securing a job with Globacom Limited. He said he was hopeful that he would secure the employment despite the discouragement by many of his contemporaries who insisted that getting such a job with a big Telecoms required ‘connections’ and since my friend didn’t have one he would fail. He succeeded.

 

I believe that anybody can set a goal, make calculated effort, through organised planning and self-motivation, and reach that goal. It is however important to differentiate between good success and bad success. This may be a paradoxical way of looking at the concept of success. But we probably do need to classify some success as good and some as bad in order to separate what is truly glorifying from what is merely vain-glorious. 

 

Success is good insofar as it is positive and thus adds value to the person and the society. On the other hand, success is bad insofar as it is negative and thus is injurious to the person and the society. Like most phenomena that shape human actions and engineer motivations, crave for success may be positively or negatively applied. Public officials who embezzle tax-payers’ monies to build mansions and fly in private jets, may think that they are successful but that is negative success. They lack ethics and values. They cause injuries to themselves and the society, both in the immediate and long terms. But truly successful people are those who believe that the means of achieving material wealth and accomplished fame begins with a high level of moral and mental development. Positive, ethical and good success is therefore the focus of this book.

 

Similarly, success has grades. We can talk about partial and substantial levels of success. The good news is that partial success is better than no success at all. This is because one of the best ways to aim and achieve success substantially is to achieve it in bits. Most people who can be described as substantially successful in business or career often achieve it gradually. President Obama started as a ‘community organizer’. As the saying goes, little drops of water make a mighty ocean.

 

Achieving and acquiring greater heights thus require persistence in actions of success. Since out of nothing, nothing comes, and since something cannot be built upon nothing, people who crave for success must first aim to achieve ‘something’. This holds true to all forms of success: you can only make a First Class, only after you have made distinctions in each of the levels of your course of study; you can legitimately become a millionaire only after you have saved and invested several thousand of a particular currency, or except you inherit it. The richest man in Africa, Aliko Dangote, started his business with a loan of five hundred thousand naira from his uncle in 1977.

 

Fundamentally speaking, advancement or success is what all humans want. This is more so because we all pursue life aspirations. We all want to think more, do more, and achieve more. Psychologist Abraham Maslow famously asserted the basis for this continuous search for a higher self, and craves for attainment in the pursuit of happiness. In his 1943 paper, ‘A theory of Human Motivation’, Maslow showed that crave for progress, success and achievement is due to a ‘hierarchy’ (pyramid) of ‘needs’ that humans tend to satisfy. At the lowest and most basic level of this pyramid are the Physiological needs in terms of food, water, sleep, etc. Once these needs are met, what follows is crave for Safety needs including security of body, employment, finances, health, and family and so on.

 

These needs are followed by Love and belonging: humans want friendship, intimacy and sensual love, and sex. It is in order to satisfy these needs that people go into relationship, join clubs, and consider marriage. But humans still feel incomplete even once these needs are met. They begin to pursue Esteem: humans want respect from others and give respect in turn, they seek confidence and self-esteem; many get these needs met by getting education, undergoing training, doing charity. The final level of needs is that of Self-actualization; through which individuals seek morality, creativity, and a sense of relevance in the society. It is in pursuit of these needs that people tend to optimize their intellectual and social development. Some join politics, do charity, write auto-biographies, and seek fortune, fame and power.

 

Although there is no cap as to which level these aforementioned needs can be satisfactorily met, people that achieve certain aims in meeting some of these needs generally feel a sense of successful living. Yet, deep down in the hearts of men and women lies the insatiable desire to build mansion instead of a modest duplex or an estate instead of a comfortable bungalow; buy the latest car in town even when the one in use is not yet packed up; purchase the latest phone, computer and fashion items even when these are not needed. Some folks add and confirm every Tom, Dick and Harry on the facebook and follow thousands of tweeters even when this is not particularly necessary.

 

Yet, success is not stubborn. Positive success comes with a sense of purpose, a sense of commitment, and a sense of contentment. Individuals who refuse to manage their success often lose their fortune, fame and power. Without necessarily sounding moralistic, it is important to emphasise the need for consciousness in managing success. As Yemi Omogboyega, lawyer and farmer, wrote it, ‘no consciousness, no success. When success comes, it takes consciousness to manage it successfully’. Nothing is truer. Indeed, as we can observe, success is both literally and practically inherent in consciousness. See, all the alphabets of ‘success’ are readily available in ‘consciousness’. Is that a mere happenstance? Who knows?

 

Truly, success means achievement, fulfillment and ‘happy-ending’. Success is a positive realization and or recognition and relevance in one’s family, profession and or society. As will be further pointed out in the chapters that follow, you don’t need to be popular to be successful. The journey to the ‘city of success’ is replete with the ‘bus stops’ of self awareness, self improvement, self-reliance, risk-taking and self-confidence. But passing through these ‘bus stops’ equally involves asking critical questions and taking regular doses of certain vitamins. At the ‘self awareness’ bus stop, you must ask, ‘who am I’? ‘What can I do, and what can I not do?’ These questions will provoke internal debates about your essential strengths and weaknesses and how to maximise your strengths and minimize your weaknesses or turn them into strengths.

 

At the bus stop of ‘self-improvement’ you will ask questions on ‘what can I do to get better than my present self’? It is here that you will know which of your skills need more honing, which of your plans need a re-touch, and which of your attributes need constant improvement. Leaving here, you proceed to the bus stop of ‘self-reliance’, where you become more and more prone to success. Your confidence level is increased. And your self-worth is getting to the peak. But you must move further to the next bus stop of ‘risk-taking’. This is where most people turn back. They don’t want to take risk.

 

But folks who take calculated risks become liable to succeed in their dreams, plans and goals. Even if need be, as often is the case, we must not hesitate to take some occasional trips back to the bus stop of self-improvement. It is the most perpetually needed. The journey, however, continues to the bus stop of ‘self confidence’. Here, you fear no fear. You are already armed with lessons in persistence and enthusiasm, and you will always feel that you can achieve anything that you set out for yourself. The good news is that you need not travel further, just keep on going round these bus stops because they are all in the city of Success!

 

Yet, it is not enough to desire success, one must also deserve it. All humans are potential geniuses. To be successful, conscious, non-superstitious, positive, productive and progressive actions are needed. To take the relevant and significant actions, one needs mental, moral and material boosters. It is possible to be successful in small task as it is to be successful in big task. The only limitations towards achievement and fulfillment are the ones that one permits on his or her mind. The mind is elastic. Whether one wants mental development, physical fitness, emotional stability or financial freedom, thoughts transform desires into realities. This is the more reason why we all need certain ‘success vitamins’. These vitamins help individuals to discover or re-discover what must be permitted on one’s mind, and what, on the other hand must be done, on a persistent manner, in order to attain and sustain success.

 

In the end, success is the triumph over fate, fear and failure. It is doing the planned. It is even most times doing the impossible. Success is outstripping your yesterday with your today while setting bigger plans, dreams and goals for a better, brighter tomorrow. Success is however not pompous. Success is humble. Success is respectful, respected and respectable. Success is doing the right thing. Success is to look troubles, tests and tribulations in the eyes, and say ‘despite all these odds, I will make it’. Success is not giving up. Success is putting the eyes on the prize. Success attracts success. The more successful you are the more successful you will likely continue to be, mutatis mutandis. Success is Faith. Success is Hope. Success is Action.

• Culled from SOURCES OF SUCCESS, a soon-to-be-released book by the author