Parametrizing Success!

A previous article on Defining Success dealt with the motivation for trying to break down the definition of personal success into it's components.. and parametrizing it.. here's one approach..

Professional : This shall encompass your professionals SOP, whatever you want to do in life, be the CEO, or the decision maker.. basically whatever you say your long term goals are, in your interviews. (assuming you don’t completely cook them up on the spot) Also includes your wealth, power, fame, reputation in professional circles and so on. Also, this includes the scientists waiting to see the entanglement of two nucleons in a particular fashion or the stage artist that want to have his audience in splits.. or in tears! That’s where you derive your intellectual satisfaction from.

Material : I believe that this can be understood exclusive of the professional pursuit because this has reasons beyond the need for personal achievement. This would count material wealth and success as an important goal of life. Of course, it might be seen as a precursor to the other dimensions and maybe it’s unfair to equate it to the other factors. But there are schools of thought that would hold this behind the others, overall, it would be grossly mistaken if we put it as yet another dimension of success.

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Personal : For the sake of mutual exclusivity of parameters, lets restrict this one to the need for being a good son/daughter to start with. Then one goes on to be the sibling, the friend, the lover, the spouse, the parent and so on! Basically all about personal relationships.. typically the one to one connotation.

Somethings that can be classified together under one’s Need to make a Difference :

Social : This is about the sense of social responsibility that you feel. About making a direct positive contribution to your immediate society and the lives of the unrelated (not the defined family as such) people around you. You might like to see the children educated and healthy, the old well taken care of, the women empowered…..

Nationlism: Lets take your own sense of patriotism or loyalty to your country. You might feel strongly about the political scenario and might want to make a difference. You might also want to propel your nation’s reputation on the world map!

Humanity at Large : You might be worried about the mad rush behind materialism that humans are grappling with. You might like to address the existential angst that every single individual goes through in the process. Eliminate hurts from the world! Eliminate grief from the world.

Religion : If you feel strongly about the need for a re-identification of your own religion and dismayed by the depraved state of affairs and hate the self proclaimed defendants of your own religion and want to change the way it’s percived, maybe you have something to do in this sub-dimension.

Spiritual Growth : This is where the complete internal dimension comes in. This is where you strive for inner peace and a better understanding of what it means to be alive, to be a part of this world. You want to explore God and the significance/implications of your regular actions in the larger scheme of things!

Own Personality Development : If you’re convinced about some of your personality woes, as anger/arrogance etc. that you’d like to get over and some other positive qualities that you’d like to inculcate, in an overall pursuit of a stronger personality.. If you think of the Geeta’s definitions of the key enemies of man himself, and want to pursue to perfection, the creation and evolution of your own personality, you have a strong orientation towards constant learning and imbibing of that learning.

Now, much as I’d like to make this list and exhaustive one, it would definitely suffer because of my own limited sensibility. I’d be happy if someone can bring in things that people might want in life and I’d try to classify it in one of these categories or create a new category itself. Shall get back later to what the repercussions of unfair weightage to the various dimensions would be!

Also, what the ultimate success in any particular dimension would mean, while understanding that people have their own definitions and someone might be quite high on some of these, willing to forgo the others totally.. whether that's the society subjugated to personal career growth.. or it's a corporate career given up to serve a small community.. that's yet to be understood.

To be continued...

Wanderer