Success is the progressive realisation of a worthwhile dream

I think everyone knows that in order to succeed, one most never ever give up. Yet, it seems that almost everyone gives up all too easily. It seems that everyone is satisfied to live their life in mediocrity. What a shame! Life can indeed be better! I believe that everyone here has a desire to be successful in any facets of life. No, I am not defining success as having the financial means alone. What it means to be successful is in fact very personal. What is success? The best definition of success I’ve ever heard so far is as the following.

Success is the progressive realisation of a worthwhile dream.

How simple and true that phrase is! Let’s try and break it down and see what it really means. Firstly, it says that success is a progression. Progress. Hence, success isn’t so much about what we want to achieve. Instead, the whole philosophy behind the ideology of success is the process and progress that we go through on the path to success. What does this mean, you may ask.

Let us think and ponder on this for a moment. As an example to illustrate this concept, let’s say you wanted so much to be an airline pilot and to fly a commercial jumbo jet for one of the most successful airline company. But at the moment, you have just only enrolled to join flight school. Suddenly, as you were walking around the corner back toward home, you noticed a peculiar looking lamp. You picked it up, gave it a rub and lo and behold, a genie appeared and grants you just one wish. You think about it for a moment. You knew that all you wanted was to have a career of a successful airline pilot and fearing that you may fail flight school, you asked for it. *Poof* The genie disappears.

Now, how would you feel after immediately turning into a highly skilled commercial pilot within the minute? You may feel a sudden rush of emotions at that moment of the sudden achievement of your dreams. But, once the whole idea sinks in, you will begin to realise that you have missed the most important aspects of being successful. When you talked to your fellow pilots, they would relive stories of their experiences in flight school, how they crashed they simulations and probably even teaching the flight instructor a thing or two about flying. You would also wonder how you might have felt if you were to fly for the first time as your fellow colleagues shares their experiences. Success, as you have found, is not the immediate realisation of your dream.

As you can see, the whole point of achieving success is quite ironic. But it is the experiences that you gain in the progress of achieving your dreams that makes this whole concept of success so appealing.

Let’s now take the last section of the phrase and conclude my thoughts for today. The phrase emphasises that success is about achieving a worthwhile dream. Here’s where it gets a little bit personal. Dream. What is your dream? In fact, do you even know how to dream anymore? I’ve always envy children as they do not limit their dreams as we adults do. Adulthood, it seems, has a funny way of ‘teaching’ us the boundaries and reality of our perceived lives.

As children, we are all enthusiastic about our dreams. Hence, we would go around and tell everyone about it. But what would the adults tell us? Most would usually steal our dreams and tell us how unrealistic it is and how we won’t be able to make it. As children, of course we won’t care what anyone tells us, but as we grow up, these negative comments begin to sink it. Our mind is like a dry sponge soaking up any water that comes in contact with it. So, if it’s all black and dirty water we are getting, the sponge would eventually turn black as well. So, the more negative comments we hear, the more we start to think how ‘unrealistic’ our dreams are.

I’ve once read that having a dream is not a guarantee that you will succeed, but not having a dream is a guarantee for failure. This alone is the major factor why only 10 percent of the people in the world achieve success and control of their lives. I thank the Lord that I’ve had the pleasure of being with a bunch of highly successful people. And if there’s anything I’ve learnt from them, it’s simply the fact that being successful is all about doing things that ‘normal’ people won’t. The path toward success is often unconventional, irrational, illogical and unrealistic. Otherwise, wouldn’t everyone be successful by now?

So what does it takes to be successful? As hard as it may sound, success is merely just a choice. You need to choose to want to be successful. With that, you would then have the discipline to stay on the path toward success no matter the obstacles that you will face. And all this will be driven by a strong and worthwhile dream. Dream big, and be unconventional. You have no idea how close you are to success once you make the decision.