WHAT IS SUCCESS.

Hello steemians, I come with joyful greetings and a question to ponder on. A question I believe we have had a wrong answer to.
I will try to give my opinion on the topic as much as possible. Remember it's just an opinion.

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What is success to you?
What do you consider as success in your marriage life, in your career life, in your social life?
What do you consider as success in Steemit? What does steemit considers as successful? Is it becoming the number one cryptocurrency in the world?
What is that one thing that if given to you right now, you will say you are successful? Is it money, fame, a spouse, children, family, a successful business?

Nowadays we have let society dictate to us what success is all about. To many people now success is a thing they want to have. I asked some colleagues today at work and they told me making money from what they are doing is success to them.
To many persons now success is having money, making us think Success is the byproduct of money. That is why the number of youths joining scamming, secret society and others all in the name of attending success.

Definition of Success.
There are many definitions to success, but I will like to go with the one given by Earl Nightingale, one of the greatest voice in America radio history. He defines success as a progressive realization of worthy ideal.

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In this definition, one thing strikes me so profoundly, the word PROGRESSIVE which indicates CONTINUITY and the word WORTHY which speaks VALUE, IMPORTANT and SIGNIFICANT to you. This definition says success is continuous in nature, it doesn’t necessary says you must have accomplished it, but that you should try to accomplish the goal. This means that for you to become successful, you need to look for an ideal/goal/purpose that is worthy to you. And for you to effectively do this, you need to know yourself, know your purpose, identifies what speaks to your heart. This is where self-awareness as a factor to success sets in, Garyvee a Marketing guru in America says that if you don’t know who you are then you will not know where you are going to. Myles Monroe in his book " In pursue of purpose" tries to illustrate the fact that identifying your purpose is key in life, knowing why you were put on this planet earth is very important. He explains that we did not put ourselves on Earth, and to know your purpose you need to ask the creator the reason for his creation.
The easiest way to knowing who you are, why you were created is first to reconnect with your creator to seek his divine purpose for your life and then you need to identify what makes you happy, the things that when you do you will feel happy. Most times when I talk about identifying what makes us happy and do it, a lot of youths say the things that makes them happy is having money, watching TV and relaxing that makes them happy. But unfortunately for us, even Adam who was not required to work before eating needed to tend the garden, our mandate on earth is to explore till the ends of the world. So identifying the work, the skills, talents that were put in us to enable us explored the earth is very important.
In the definition of success, there is no word like Money. THAT IS BECAUSE MONEY IS NOT SUCCESS. That’s not to say money is not important but money is a byproduct of success. That is why most people who have Money as their purpose/goal hardly have it, simply because money is an instrument, a tool to either make your progressive realization of a worthy goal comfortable and achievabel. Most persons who progressively pursue money instead of a goals end up not being happy even when they have money. And I am not saying that rich people are sad as is the usual connotation when one makes a statement like this. Aliko Dangote is rich, has a lot of money and is still happy. That is a born business man right from young and he is doing what he loves most. Jeff Bezos is a sales man, 20 years ago he started selling in a garage, that is what he loves doing and therefore amassing wealth doing that becomes easy and happy. We look at the lives of some rich persons in another write up another day.
But again, not all ideal goals have money as a byproduct, or end results. For example, a teacher who is happy teaching and doesn’t find interest in amassing is also successful. At the end of the day, success is really all about knowing who you are and what you want. Nelson mandela wanted to free his people from hardship and he did, he was successful. Mother Theresa want to serve nations and she was successful and Mahamat Gandhi wanted a nation India to have a different mindset and he did even though he was never seen with shoes. These are all successful persons and did extraordinary things with their life.
The most important thing is for you to know who you are, if you want to become a teacher and you also want to have money, teach and look for avenues to have money too, nothing, no one is stopping you but identify that WORTHY goal/purpose that you want to accomplish. Do not let other people identify theirs and let you follow like a sheep.
You were meant to be a leader and not just a follower, but if you feel like honestly following is what you do best and enjoy doing follow as if you were the one leading, after all, the greatest leader in the world was a follower, Jesus Christ.
Answering the question, Success is everything but not money.
Thank you. @ebuahsang1