If you check the definition of “success” you will find the description “the accomplishment of an aim or purpose”.
A little simplistic, perhaps.
Success isn’t to accomplish something. It would be simplistic.
On the other hand, a definition is needed to explain a word, not to make people understand the universe behind it.
It’s really complicated to grasp the real-world meaning of success.
I have always thought of how to explain this word without diminishing its importance- or magnifying what success is.
And that’s not an easy task. You must consider so many aspects, and unfortunately there is not a universal approach.
Because success is not simply succeeding in something and having a good outcome: that is having results.
After a long, particular process that changes for each of us, one can gain results. Accomplish something. And this would be in line with the definition itself of success, but success isn’t just that. It’s rather a different thing for each and every one of us.
Yes, because success is not the same for everyone.
Some may imagine success as having a six or seven figures salary. Others could imagine success as helping people around or trying to improve themselves. Other people, still, imagine success as an imprint they want to leave in history.
You see, these examples I have given demonstrate three basic types of perception of success. They are not equal to each other and they can even be at odds at an ideal level.
If three people, for example, accomplish something towards what they feel is their success…they’re going to be successful.
Yet, their goals are completely different from one another.
These examples, these imaginary three people, all have something in common, even when their desired end result is profoundly different.
Today we would call this thing in common “leadership”, the ability to lead and orient.
If success is your path, you need to know how to be a navigator to get to your destination, right? And we don’t all use to the exact same destination, therefore you can’t give a hypothetical universal map.
We must learn (and teach) to read whatever map we find ourselves having in our hands and then lead; being a leader.
The thing, in fact, that has historically been part of any successful person journey (regardless of what success this person was looking for) is the ability to manage situations in the best possible way to bring structural advantages that help on the path to success.
Any kind of success.
This ability is the set of small or large skills that fall under the umbrella of the so-called soft skills.
Scholars describe them as “soft skills that are useful for both academic success and in the world of work.”
Once these skills were seen as innate abilities or acquired through heavy individual study, particular life experience.
Today, we can teach them to anyone, quite simply.
And, in my opinion, we need to do just that.
That is nowadays the main role of authentic leaders: not achieving merely personal goals but teaching others how to read the map, how to improve, how to cope with life’s unpredictability.
That is the exact role of a leader. A true leader.
It helps others unlock their true potential and does not complain if someday those people who followed them will be better and more successful. An authentic leader is not greedy and doesn’t manipulate things to avoid healthy competition.
True leaders share their secrets to propel humanity further, they don’t try to stay in power no matter what…by any means.
That is the main difference between a leader and a politician, for example.
Politicians need to stay in power to continue to lead and feel like leaders, while authentic leaders are transparent and they show and share what they do and know.
This will be the future of leadership. That’ll be the future of leaders. Not people who solely accomplished something, but people who accomplished something and shared their experience and knowhow.
People who push the boundaries further every day…Hoping they will inspire more and more people to do the same.
No matter what success they are looking for, whether money, power, social change or history.
Maybe that is the true definition of success:
“to push boundaries every day a bit further, with resilience, while accompanied by all the one who made it thanks to you.”
