Stop Looking At Success This Way

We need to change our perspectives on what success actually looks like.

I’d rather not talk about this man, but his story thus far has an important lesson underneath it all.

This is a man that we all know full well. After all almost everything he does gets public attention. This is a man with multiple criminal cases filed against him too.

But what’s so interesting about this man is that out of them all, the most important one to him is a civil case.

Undermining an election doesn’t bother him. Trying to overthrow and have a group of people kill his “right hand man” doesn’t bother him.

What really gets under his skin is a case that accuses him of fraud and questions the entire image that he presents himself as. A billionaire real estate agent whose properties across the globe embarrass even Elon Musk’s net worth.

Supposedly.

Anyone who hasn’t drank the kool-aid knows full well that Trump is a liar and a con artist. But to his base, he is one of the many successful people out there in the world.

And to an extent he is. His success was rooted in conning all kinds of people and having them support his various endeavours.

At the end of the day, Trump built his brand and himself around this idea of success. Deep down in his mind he sees success as nothing more than a status. A status that he is now fighting because someone finally started to look into the various shady things he and his family have done.

Even though we all know he’s guilty of these various crimes, it’s still up in the air whether he will be going to prison or not. Big media still frames Biden as some old and failing man — despite Trump being only a handful of years younger than him. That and they still cover and excuse Trump for the various statements he makes.

But his behaviour right now with these court cases is relatable to some extent. The fact he cares more about his business image than anything else right now is something we can all relate to.

After all, so many of us see being successful as some kind of status.

Or at the very least see being successful as a means of looking good in front of others.

Success Defined

Self-help and success go hand in hand in so many ways. With the idea of growing and improving yourself, it makes sense that the natural progression of ones growth will lead to someone being successful.

But it’s this exact process that’s more nuanced than it may seem.

Not only do our methods of achieving our goals be different from one another and how they are executed, but so are the outcomes. Even just slightly. Our trajectory is different and we experience and interpret entirely new things than what someone who walked a similar path would experience.

Because of this nuanced, it’s fair to say that success looks and is even defined differently from one another. Yes, there’s definitely some similarities in our views of what makes and is a successful person. But there’s always more to that answer.

Being successful could be being able to answer a hard question or solve some difficult situations. It could be ones ability to resonate with people or with a group.

At the end of the day, what success actually looks like varies from individual to individual.

But probably the one that we can best relate to at the end of the day comes down to a series of questions:

• How many of your own problems have you solved?
• How many times have solving those problems made you feel fulfilled?
• How many people have you helped after finding your own sense of fulfilment?

Obviously those numbers are going to vary from person to person which is why the final question is most important…

How many people will you need to help in order to consider yourself a successful person?

Another way to look at this can be boiled down to ones own impact on society and determining whether that is enough for yourself or whether you want make a bigger impression.

What We Get So Wrong About Success

When we look at Trump’s own image, we can say he is a successful person.

Though not in the way that he is fighting for in courts right now.

He — like so many other wealthy individuals — are wrapped up in this idea that their status is what matters most to them.

The Sackler family still has their names on various buildings despite the opioid epidemic they created.

Elon Musk recently got booed again to the point he locked himself in an office.

I’ve said before that too much money is a serious mental illness so I do feel some pity for these individuals. But that doesn’t fully absolve what they’ve done, what they represent, and how they’ve conditioned so many other people.

Before we learned the full extent of Perdue Pharma’s influence, the Sackler family were basically left alone. There was nothing wrong with having their names up in all kinds of public places.

Without knowing the full picture and details of Musk’s life we can look at his success story and say it’s a tragic one with a lot of ups and downs and he persisted through it all.

And before Trump ever went into office, a lot of us were amused by Trumps antics and considered him a complete joke who would fail.

But regardless of what we felt about them before those major turning points, we still considered these individuals successful. And they showed that through a variety of ways.

They gave the air of being successful and focused so much on their image of success that they were blindsided by what actually made them successful. And despite the incredible amount of damage these individuals caused, they are considered successful.

Because they made a lasting impression on us for totally the wrong reasons that they envisioned. And they helped others along the way, by being worse versions of themselves.

And it’s this fixation on their status that results in this.

While we may not make as big of an impact as these individuals have, the principles that come from their behaviour still apply to us.

If we care about our success that we focus on simply looking good, we lose our own sense of self that made us successful or grow in the first place. We lose that base reason for pursuing goals and instead use that to give the air or illusion of success.

It’s this mindset that leads us to defend other successful people by focusing on their wealth or how they make us feel rather than what they’ve actually done and the impact it’s left behind. It’s why we jump onto the idea that being successful is a matter of having expensive status symbols, looking a certain way, or being able to check off certain key things depending on ones age.

In the end, rich people convinced us for so long that what matters the most to be successful is the status behind it. And we bought it.

And we still continue to buy it thanks to their various tricks.

It’s time for us to start making a change.

Let’s Redefine What Success Is Again

A lot of our inner belief systems define our actions and how we view the world. If you want to change how you see the world, you merely have to change how you view particular aspects.

Obviously, this is easier said than done. We’re stubborn beings of habit after all and it’s difficult to readily change ones mind. Especially in circumstances like this where the most convincing person to change your mind is yourself.

But the idea is to at least give it a shot. To be open to a new perspective and for you to reach your own definitions and conclusions.

People do still change over time based on the experiences that we experience.

Journalists after covering Trump for years have finally realized now to some degree that he is a fascist.

We’ve seen how Musk turned a gathering spot for political activism devolve into a right-wing propaganda machine that also continues to suck as a legitimate social media platform.

These experiences change people’s minds and as we’re seeing in the Trump cases, him fighting over what is effectively his business image means he’s scared about people thinking less of him. Even though plenty of people do.

But I do believe we can get more out of it than that. Perhaps it’s seeing these examples and the continued blunders of so many rich and “successful” people that can help us realize that success has nothing to do with status.

Perhaps success is something entirely different — not just a helping hand extended towards another in need.

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