As I touched upon last time, in sports and competition, rules are made to determine a victor. In life, there are no such clear rules. And yet we as a society determine concepts of what success is based on these competitions. But this type of “success” is a notion that is merely a simple construct to govern people and society.
True success is a relative term uniquely defined by the individual.
Many who have been deemed “successes” by society often suffer from a lack of fulfillment resulting in crashing and burning some way. One of the reasons for this is that these people embody a state of maintaining their status quo rather than focusing on improving.
Being number one in a competition proves not that you are the best you can be, but rather that you, compared to everyone else in that one defined competition, are better. Life is much more than that. As a die-hard USC Football fan, Lou Holtz is the epitome of the enemy, but here his experience and wisdom rings so true:
Those who win can feel cheapened in victory by not fully applying him or herself to the moment; whereas, the “losers” in that same circumstance could actually feel successful; that is, if they had put forth their entire effort. Success stems from the peace of mind knowing you did what you could with the best of your abilities–win or lose.
Society compares and contrasts those who are successful, it is how we as humans are wired: to organize and prioritize things. Who’s better Kobe or Lebron? Lebron or Michael? Michael or Kobe? It provides hours of content we all will watch.
We as a society can compare you today to who you were yesterday, but we can never compare who you are today to what you could potentially have been today. We can postulate and make wild guesses, but only you know the amount of effort you put forth. Only you know if you were better today than yesterday to the fullest extent of your abilities and what that version of you looks like.
Society can identify and define a concept of success and greatness because it is a standard already observed and achieved by someone. In some sense, it is the status quo. It is maintaining. To achieve more than the status quo, you must be “pissed off at greatness”:
Society can only see the outcome of your efforts, the hits, goals, touchdowns; they cannot see or experience what it took from you to achieve that outcome, be it your full efforts or not. Only you know what is possible within yourself.
It is not the achievement of being the best in the world that defines the ultimate form of success (personal satisfaction On a Life Well Spent), but rather by becoming the best form of yourself that does.
And to be the best form of yourself–in whatever way that means, you must take continual steps of improvement. There’s no simpler litmus test than to compare yourself today with yesterday; to see if you put forth your fullest effort.
And day by day, success will be achieved and accumulated in whatever capacity you decide until the clock runs out. For ultimately we all give in to time. We all have a limited amount of time to achieve success; we all die. But in these moments between now and death, you have the opportunity to achieve whatever it is you’re going to achieve, but you first have to believe it; you first have to believe in yourself.
Competition is a great mental framework to start with, but there’s far more to life than what happens on Any Given Sunday.
So instead of focusing on competing, the focus becomes what do you believe you can achieve? Are you potentially limiting yourself in what you can achieve? Do you have good reason to do so? You probably do. But should those reasons matter? I argue no, but that is for next time…