It is less than a half an hour before noon, and I am still drying off. Last night I managed to leave the sun roof wide open, and this morning I had a nice and soggy drive into work. I decided that I would stop to pick up a dry outfit, which I did. However, I never actually changed into the dry outfit. I’m brilliant like that… complaining about being wet while sitting next to a brand new pair of pants and a brand new shirt. My mental blocks and oddities don’t necessarily make perfect sense – or at least I haven’t been able to understand them completely.
Last night I watched a very interesting “talk” about success and how we define successes and failures. It was a very insightful lecture, and the takeaway that I got was that it is most important that we are the authors of our own ambitions – that our definition of success is our own definition, and is not something that was inherited from an outside source.
The lecture (by Alain de Botton: A Kinder, Gentler Philosophy of Success) mentioned that the primary source of one’s image of success is their parent. For boys, their father is usually what defines success. For girls, their mother is their image of success. What do I consider successful, and from whom did I acquire this concept? My gut instinct is to say that my mother provided me with my vision of success on a conscious level, and my father provided me with my subconscious idea of success. Between these two, very different versions of success I have crafted my own concept of success – but what is it?
I think that success is being content with one’s self. Internally we have a subconscious definition of success that drives our happiness and our dissatisfaction. When we are happy, we are successful. When we are upset, we have not been successful. This is the basis for understanding our own concept of success. Once this is realized, we just have to be clear on what makes us happy, and what disappoints us.
I can say this… forgetting to close the sun roof on a rainy night was quite disappointing to me. I was not happy as I drove toward work soaking wet. 15 minutes after beginning to type this, I am still wet and sitting next to a brand new, dry outfit that I will not put on for many reasons – mostly my own insanity and self-consciousness… I struggle to understand my own motivation.