‘Success is a choice’ : a slogan that will make you feel lousy

Are you successful? Success is a choice!!! Pfff…. Now that’s one of those slogans that can get you all feel bad and/or lousy. As if you can force success. And that if you don’t succeed, it’s because of you…. Are you a loser if you don’t succeed? Surely there is such a thing as “having the wind at your back,” a “lottery ticket” and “luck falling out of the sky into your palm?” In other words there is a chance factor involved in success, isn’t there? Just meeting the right person at the right time, for example, that is a lucky coincidence. How is it a choice?

Let’s unravel this bold statement.

First of all, success. What is that? When are you successful? Is success becoming rich and famous? Is success getting applause from the outside world? If you look at it that way, very few people are successful…. So it’s a little more nuanced.

Literally, success means to succeed, achieve favorable outcome or result, and comes from the Latin word ‘succedere’ (to follow up, have consequence). So it is just what you consider a result or success that allows you to say, “I am successful!”

So success is personal. What I consider success, you don’t have to consider success. However, there are common characteristics based on which you determine your personal success in your work, and they are:

1. You do what you love to do
2. You do what you think is important for yourself and/or those around you
3. You see that what you do adds value
4. You can enjoy the effect it has

So whether you are a carpenter, who takes pride in his craft and enjoys a satisfied customer; or you are a clinical specialist who heals patients, both are successful.

At least….

If the carpenter dreamed of wood as a boy and tinkered in his father’s barn, and the specialist had actually wanted to be a heart surgeon and doesn’t have as much affinity for his patients…. So who is successful? The carpenter right?

Who can say a resounding “yes” to the above four characteristics. But perhaps the specialist is the most successful in the eyes of the outside world; he earns more money and he cures people!

You determine the measure of success …

And that brings us to the second aspect of the slogan: choice. The most important choice you can make in your work is whether you yourself are the measure of success, or whether you place that measure outside of yourself and therefore someone else determines whether you are successful or not.

Sure, we all want colleagues to appreciate us, we want supervisors to like us, and we want to be paid well for our work. But in that dependence, success is a shaky concept. Because you get the tendency to work harder than is good for you, to take on jobs you don’t really like, to adapt to a way of working that is not your own.

And then, after a lot of blood, sweat and tears, when you also don’t get the recognition you actually want, you can’t say, “I am successful….”

And you have more influence

However, if you put the yardstick with yourself, and you determine what success means to you, you have more influence over what you do and how you do it. You determine at the end of the day whether you are successful. And even then it may take blood, sweat and tears, but you will know what you’re doing it for and whether it’s worth it.

And oddly enough, if you can say, “I’m proud of what I do,” and “I believe in what I do,” that has a positive effect on the outside world; it evokes respect and trust, which increases your chances that the outside world will also cooperate in your desired outcome.

‘Success is a choice’ has had its day

In short, the flashy slogan “success is a choice” conjures up an image of fast boys and bright girls, in a world of easy wins and big effects. Lay it aside. The statement gains real value only when you can say:

my success is my choice!!!