What is Success anyway?
I've been thinking a lot about success lately. In the last year many of us have had just about everything we know turned upside down and we are being forced to take a new look at old assumptions. For example, what is success? How we define it has a lot to do with who we are. Definitions of success are as varied as snow flakes -- no two are alike. Commenting fondly on the human condition, my spiritual teacher once said that there are 6 billion religions in the world, one for each of us on this planet, (although we tend to believe that everyone should believe the way we do!) Similarly, there are as many individual definitions of success that spur us on to take action (or not).
Fortunately or unfortunately (depending on the results), there is a powerful cultural overlay defining success that pushes us in directions which may or may not be right for us. If we do not have a deep inner barometer of success defined by our own truth and measured by our own integrity, this cultural definition of success can lead us towards dissatisfaction and even dishonesty.
If we hold a well lit mirror up to our pop culture icons we will see our cultural malaise and disease reflected back in various degrees of severity, from anorexia, to teenage breast implants, to the Wall Street white collar thugs who ransacked our nation's wealth. Bernie Maddox probably thought that he was a very successful man. And so did just about everybody else.
Fortunately or unfortunately (depending on the results), there is a powerful cultural overlay defining success that pushes us in directions which may or may not be right for us. If we do not have a deep inner barometer of success defined by our own truth and measured by our own integrity, this cultural definition of success can lead us towards dissatisfaction and even dishonesty.
If we hold a well lit mirror up to our pop culture icons we will see our cultural malaise and disease reflected back in various degrees of severity, from anorexia, to teenage breast implants, to the Wall Street white collar thugs who ransacked our nation's wealth. Bernie Maddox probably thought that he was a very successful man. And so did just about everybody else.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
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