For the longest time that I can remember, success was directly correlated to the title a person had. However, over time, the most important lesson for me has been learning to differentiate between success and the perception of success.
In terms of pedigree, one generally tended to get hooked on to the fancy newspaper headlines that carried the front-page news of top business school graduates landing plum jobs in different companies. That sure was convincing and had a drawing power that has its way of playing on the mind of people in their most impressionable age (teens).
I have been a victim to these fancy headlines too (in my teens). More than anything else, these headlines made one believe that the definition of success was highly correlated to making those headlines. And doing anything else or anything less, is not going to be good enough. Or, for that matter, someone who went overseas early in life and got into some place with high pedigree was the be-all and end-all of a career. Absolutely nothing wrong with those outcomes and one is genuinely happy for the folks who get there, except for one thing.
These fancy headlines or great pedigrees do not provide an assessment of what you are good at, individually i.e. the difference between success and the perception of success.
In my experience and understanding (after many trials & tribulations), success is actually the exact opposite of what one sees in these newspaper headlines i.e. success is innate, personal, very individualistic, extremely arduous, and can never be a replica of someone else. The greatest design deficiency with the newspaper headlines and the fancy pedigrees that one sees all around is that there are no measures or indicators of whether they are cut out for your individual profile. Or, for that matter, whether that success that we see or are sold, is our definition of success i.e. what is good for someone else, need not be true for you. There is a fairly deep level of analysis, self-introspection, judgement and balance that is barely captured by the media.
To a large extent, I believe that success can only come to a person if one identifies one's areas of strength,, can hopefully get corresponding opportunities to match those areas of strength, and work harder than anyone else to maximize that opportunity. That is easier said than done and is a time-consuming process. There are so many things that need to fall in place for this thing called success to even occur in the way that you define it (and not somebody else's!) - opportunity, skill development, timing, good orientation, mentoring, patience, the incredible ability to digest failure and not fall by the wayside, learning, unlearning, and not repeating fundamental mistakes.
We are generally not geared to handle all those things all at once. Hence, the folks who grab the newspaper headlines (i.e. perception of success) are not an indicator of what you can do. At best, one can (and should), draw inspiration from success stories, and see what attributes one can apply into one's own sphere.
For e.g. Rahul Dravid, my inspiration/role model (and arguably the greatest no.3 cricket batsman ever), once famously said that he enrolled for the Indian Chartered Accountancy (CA) programme as a back-up to his cricketing career. As soon as he opened the first chapter in his book, he redoubled his efforts in cricket! More importantly (and this is the crux), once he identified what he was absolutely a champion in, he gave it his all. And the results are there for the cricketing world to see! If only more number of us were able to synthesize our skills and definition of success as magically as the great man did!
One of the greatest quotes I have read also comes from the great Dravid. He once said, 'I think we judge talent wrong. What do we see as talent? I think I have made the same mistake myself. We judge talent by people's ability to strike a cricket ball. The sweetness, the timing. That's the only thing we see as talent. Things like determination, courage, discipline, temperament, these are also talent'. That should seal the debate on what is success and what is the perception of success.
I genuinely wish this area of differentiating between success and perception of success is taught in school and college. The pain of wrongfully interpreting the perception of success as real success has a vast impact on the psyche, mental balance, overall personality and potentially one's outlook towards life. I have even seen folks go through depression when their perception of success did not happen in their career. Reorienting oneself to our strengths and opportunities on a constant basis, is one of the most enduring pillars of succeeding on one's own terms. That is barely taught in our younger days.
No wonder we see the emergence of mental health as a complete new industry these days. That needs a separate blog of its own at some point.
