Few Reach For Success
Success is a word that gets thrown around quite a bit.
‘I want to be successful’
‘How I succeeded’
‘Success is within reach.’
But let’s start with defining what success is. I won’t break out dictionaries, what I will do instead is recall from my self help phase of late college/recent grad when I came across a definition from Earl Nightingale where he said, success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal. Of course such a definition leaves a lot of wiggle room on what exactly is ‘progressive’ and especially ‘worthy’, but let’s run with it for a while.
Success Is Not Certain, Failure Is Not Definite
I think that one could argue that many people don’t try to succeed because just as success is progressive, that is, one must take action to move upward, climb higher, one could easily fall off a cliff. Or so people think because the reason people are so fearful of this falling so to speak is because of our inherent risk adverseness. Without getting too deep into it, we respond more to 1 unit of negative outcome then an equivalent unit of positive outcome. But what we fail to recognize is that failure is not permanent.
What it is in fact is data points for us to study, reassess, restrategize and retry. The human condition however leads so many to be blinded by success and writhe away from failure. What happens then is that most people accept their current station in life, rather then striving for who they could (& ought) to be. Their fate is sealed. But those that are able to shrug off this natural human tendency to grasp on tightly to any small success and refuse to climb higher for fear of failure are able to see a beauty few do. And that is the ceiling for success is undefined. There is no ceiling. It’s just clouds up in the sky.
Now perhaps we can identify traits that such an individual that reaches for the sky has in a future post, but to wrap up, why aren’t you reaching?
Kingston S. Lim
May 6, 2022
Lagos, Nigeria
Kingston S. Lim 