When we think of success, the first thing that comes to mind is an individual achieving something great. But how is that achievement measured? Well there is no answer to that as success cannot be quantitatively measured. One can’t take a measuring stick to measure the amount of success an individual has achieved, nor is it possible to weigh the amount of success the individual has reached from their hard work. So what is the true measurement of success? In my opinion, the true measurement of success can be identified when an act performed by an individual exceeded societal predetermined expectations and understanding.
Walking for example, is a simple task that we all take for granted every day, we don’t even need to think about it when our feet each takes a step forward or backwards. This is because as adults society has identified that the act of walking is an ordinary outcome and a part of growing up. Walking is already predetermined in our minds to be a passive act that all adults are expected to do no different from breathing and eating. But let’s keep the same predetermined criteria of walking and apply it to a toddler who instead of beginning to walk, actually started off running.
Immediately our brains will begin to go into frenzy and in disbelief. Why you may ask? Well because our predetermined understanding and from the experience of walking, starting from a toddler is meant to be gradual and a slow step by step process. The fact that the toddler fast forwarded his development of walking by running, at his or her age has already far exceeded societal expectations. Once exceeded, this running toddler becomes a unique dynamic never seen in our society before, thus being labeled as a success story.
When one successfully redefines the predetermined set of expectations society has built over time, it will naturally lead to a new set of predetermined expectations and understandings, and allow us to update our understandings. Society likes to generalize and categorise what we learn and experience. A car must be manually steered, men are leaders and women followers, and a university drop out is destined to a failure in life are some common predetermined understandings society has formed. However if an individual created a car that was to be able to drive itself, a women was the president of a country, and that university drop out was to create the first ever smart phone. All are success in their own way, because they share the same characteristics of changing their outcome into something we are not able to fathom, increasing our knowledge, developing our understanding, and inspiring the society.
We individually experience many different conditions every day, so many conditions in fact that as a society seeks to define them and categories them for simplicity sake. However as we are all evolving and improving every day, society is unable to define every experience and conditions of this vast world we live in. Some individuals will have capabilities to set the new marker for a certain understanding we have of a certain topic and when that person succeeds and redefines our understanding of a particular topic, society defines that individual a success. Those that push the limit expected of them, and how much they defy society’s predetermined understanding on a particular subject, that is the true measurement of success.
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About the Author
This article was written by Kai Lin Tu of Region International, a selling arm of Region Group which focuses on selling steel fasteners to the United States market. Kai Lin hopes to develop and promote enhanced thought processing among people to cultivate fresh understandings on thought provoking topics.
