What does SUCCESS mean to you?

Haha.. so ironic!

Today's Straits TIme CATS RECRUIT. One of their articles was What does success mean to you?

I like reading this page of the straits times. Because everyday they have small little articles that either inspires you, or gives u an outlook of how the working society is right now. Today's article particularly caught my eyes.

Keys to Success: Part 1 of 2

At the end of a chat about a career coaching, a young man asked me: "When will I be successful?"

An Indian expatriate, Mr Amit, was 29 years old and working for a Fortune 500 consulting company. The company had just sent him to Delhi to set up its Indian division, and he was being considered for a long term posting to run the business there.

I was surprised that Mr Amit did not already see himself as a success. Most people are still only warming up at 29. What more could this fellow want?

I was even more amazed by his answer: "I want to be on the cover of TIME magazine." Of course I laughed - not the politically correct response, but his earnest nature was at odds with his ambition.

Having watched other young professionals rise to the top and being feted by their industry and the business world, Mr Amit felt that he could not consider himself a success unless he made it to the cover of TIME. "I thought I'd be there by now," he mused.

This led me to thinking about waht success means to people. If you asked yourself why you are not successful(yet), let us take a look at what you think success is.

People have different ideas about success: Some are happy just to be successful; some need to acquire the trappings of success in order to feel successful; while others need success to validate their lives, and have to go from one high to the next, or risk feeling useless.

Success depends on your expectations of life and everything it revolves around: family, career, friends, society and hobbies. Your idea of success could mean being finacially stable, having children,buying bigger home and retiring aborad. Or you could be someone who has a great carreer, but feel that your personal life is a failure, perhaps to the extent where the other parts of your life feels devalued.

It is difficult to put your finger on how "successful" people really feel inside. It will be prepared to say if everything they have achieved has made them happy. Here I dare venture that success and happiness are so closely related that they might as well be the same thing.

Your values shape the way you look at success. Peace at home. good health and faith may be success for a spiritual type of person, while others may seek wealth and possessions as a measure of success.

In Mr Amit's case, his parents were his main obstacles. As immigrants, they were dismayed that their son was going to move back to his homeland. To them, leaving India represented success, while the oppposite was true for Mr Amit. Furthermore, his upbringing did not allow him to discount his parents' opinion. The end result was a stalemate that Amit perceived as failure.

Opportunity is another factor that influences people's views about success. If you are blessed with good luck, you expect to succeed. On the other hand, if you have to jump through hoops for every dollar you earn, then every small opportunity to do so is a big deal, and every win is something to crow about.

Your idea about what success is changes with time. In your salad days, it might mean being able to accumulate the trapppings of success such as branded goods and cars. Your views change, as you understand more about life. Some things you have or want become less important, and other things take priority, like relationships or looking after the interests of someone other than yourself.

It is normal to doubt yourself sometimes, when nothing feels good and you are not getting anywhere. It is important not to look at one incident or factor in isolation and pinpoint that as the cause of "failure" or unhappiness.

There could be other factors, for example, the lack of degree of personal effort and personal problems. It could be that you are not enjoying your job enough to make success of it, or that you are working for the wrong type of organisation or manger. Do not hand in your resignation just yet - think it through.

As for Mr Amit, if success means basking in the adulation of his peers by being on the cover of Time, he is working towards it in all the right ways, and we might just see him there. Or, in a few years, he might meet someone or hear a story that takes him down a different path altogether, and completely change his perspective on success.