The True Measure of Success.

Success from a general perspective first throws light on the financial aspect of a person with the other characteristics following. A great number of today’s youth would envisage the idea of a success in a person as running a successful business, being wealthy, famous and possibly a solid academic background. In reality, the true measure of success is a combination of much more, and finances may not necessarily be one of them.

It is not by error, when listing success stories internationally, that Forbes Magazine does not include monarchs, millionaires and billionaires with a doubtful or unclear business or path to success, and those who basically inherit wealth to spend without a money making mechanism or business attached to it.

There are far more millionaires and billionaires in the world than Forbes and the world will ever register, from the few highlighted in the Panama files to a great number of  the Muslim world with a habit of stacking away undeclared wealth in the form of diamonds and bullions of gold. Many in Africa store wealth in hard currency, not in banks, but under their beds or locked away in secret rooms in their homes. This is no measure of success.

There is a greater tendency with mounting competition and hardship, for today’s youth to focus on and dream of the lifestyles of con artists, drug lords and their likes, looking up to them as role models and success figures. Such societies in which they thrive will go on to affect the youth negatively- A life of wrong aspirations. The environment our kids grow up in and the people they frequent largely affects their future goals and ambitions

Living large and using wealth as tool for leverage, especially for self-satisfaction at the expense of those around them, who look up to them passes a false message. A person using position and wealth to disrespect and maltreat others or coerce the wives and girlfriends of friends and family to satisfy personal carnal pleasures can in no means be deemed worthy of being labelled successful.

There is unlimited literature about how to become successful. Many talk about the way successful people think, laugh, when they go to bed, what they drink and so on. None of that really matters because success comes to different people in different ways. The true measure of success in a person, one who usually has gone through stages in life and in the process has been molded, is one who possesses high moral standards, portrays love through giving and volunteering (not barter), acts responsibly and with respect. Better still, taking up the role of a leader and teacher to those looking up to him, and impacting their lives in one way or the other goes to further stretch his measure of success.