Do you want to be successful?

In the dictionary, success means "the accomplishment of an aim or purpose." However, if you ask around, people will also refer to a successful person as someone with "wealth, fame, and/or social status."

Ironically if you consider wealth, fame, and social status as the metric of success and study the wealthiest people in the world, people like Warren Buffet, Bill gates, Jeff Bezos, Bernard Arnaud, or Elon Musk, they have not become “successful” by pursuing wealth, fame or social status. They had their aims or purposes, and the rest came as a consequence (in some cases, even undesirable consequences, as some wished they were not famous).

Accomplishing goals requires work, and depending on what you want to achieve, it requires a lot of work. To be successful, you need to be driven by ambition or envy. Both ambition and envy move the world forward. Ambition to achieve what is important to you will drive you and fulfill you. Envy will also drive you but will likely make you unfulfilled and unhappy. Why? Because the world will always tell you that someone out there is better than you and will never tell you, you are the best (even if you might be). Especially in the era of social media, the nuclear weapon of global envy creation, "Social comparison is the thieve of Joy" as Theodore Roosevelt pointed out.

Elon musk cried because his heroes, Neil Armstrong or Gene Cernan, went to congress to testify that they don't think SpaceX is doing the right thing in the space industry. If Astronauts do not recognize Elon musk for what he is doing with SpaceX, don't base your success on being recognized by the world for anything. Your ambition needs to be intrinsically motivated; it should be based on your ambition to achieve what is important to you, what drives you. That should be your yardstick for success.

An aim or purpose is a great motivator and will drive you forward, but it should be measured by its ability to create an enjoyable, meaningful, and fulfilling pursuit. Why? Because success is unreachable. Sometimes, you will be unable to reach some of your goals. In other cases, you will keep moving the objective further and further because success is addictive, and the more you have, the more you want. As soon as you get close or achieve an aim, you will set the next one. Life is an infinite game. The pursuit of success in life has no end (until the true end!), but if you enjoy the pursuit, you don't need to be afraid of the work that has no end.

Happy Life,

Pedro