Narrow Success Paradigms

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Most People's Success Paradigm Is Narrow

In my earlier post on "success", I listed down a large number of areas where if you are not successful, you may not deserve to be called fully successful in life despite the fact that you may be rich, celebrity, popular, known, influential and you have status. A person is fully successful in life only if he achieves success in all the spheres of life: personal life, professional life, home life, family life, married life, human life, social life etc.

However, most people's paradigm of success is quite narrowly defined. For some, only becoming rich is success, for some getting a particular award is ultimate success, for some bringing up the family decently is success and for some, TV and news papers flashing their pictures frequently is equivalent of success. The fact of life is that many people do believe in these narrowly defined paradigms of success. If they see others getting these kinds of successes in these narrow fields, they feel impressed by such persons and many times they feel bad about themselves since they could not achieve that kind of success.

Even achieving the success in these narrow fields is debatable. Is amassing a wealth of one hundred billion dollar is success in the "richness" paradigm of success or making forty billion dollars is good enough to be called success or say, earning few millions is also success or even earning a decent salary or income to satisfy the major needs of the family is also success? How much money one should collect for being labelled as successful?

Same question arises when people label someone successful because he is highly learned. For one to be labelled highly learned, does one need to acquire four PhDs or five post graduate degrees or any college education is good enough?

That's why, based on the extent of quantity achieved in these narrow fields, one starts getting known as more successful or less successful or just about successful.

You may achieve success (more success, less success or just about success) in some such narrow fields but then is it possible to achieve success in all the aspects of life; the aspects I defined in my earlier post to get qualified as fully successful (even here it may be more fully successful, less fully successful or just about fully successful)? Is that, then, a utopian thought?

Another relevant question about success is: what is more important in life; being fully successful by even moderate (just about OK) measures in all the aspects of life or being more or most (if one can define "most" in the context of success) successful person in couple of narrowly defined fields (like becoming rich, becoming popular, holding a very senior position like CEO or president of a state, bagging a very prestigious award etc) but being a hopelessly dismal failure in some equally important areas (dismal failure as a father or as a husband or being a white collared mass murderer by producing or serving goods and services that are very dangerous for human consumption like environmentally detrimental chemicals, harmful untested medicines, cigarettes, drugs, prostitution, child labor etc)?

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