I know that „questioning the question” instead of responding to it straightforwardly might be annoying to some of you but come one, what is „success”?

The fact that there are so many riches and socially successful people out there (owning yachts, huge houses, a garage full of expensive cars and absurd bank accounts) who feel miserable is well-known as a stereotype.

That is why I see success as reaching a state of peace of mind (which doesn’t necessarily exclude owning yahts and expensive cars, but I wouldn’t confuse them either).

When success equals being rich, it comes after a battle. The battle of reaching that socio-economical state.

When success equals peace of mind (which is a more profound way of being rich), it comes after a struggle: the „struggle” to control yourself.

The Battle

You battle when you try to align yourself with external aspects related to the outside world, such as landing the desired job. This may lead to competition and endless efforts of finding a position among your peers.

Society is the norm of everything you see around you. It means taking for granted all information, without filtering it too much, as you entrust society with all the credibility you’re capable to offer.

The outside world is the only authority you are aware of, so there aren’t any other guidelines that can deny its statements.

Therefore, you walk like a blind man in the realm of illusions where there’s no difference between will and ambition, guilt and remorse, love and infatuation, ego and dignity, politeness and kindness, and so on.

You internalize preconceptions, you build anxieties, you see stress as the norm, you adopt a fixed mindset and you think that fighting in a belligerent fashion is the only way to success.

You are blind to many subtle inner voices that show you the right way. For example, it might seem crazy to hear someone saying that competition is wrong, when we actually live in a very competitive society. That seems so counterproductive that you can only end up vulnerable.

The trick is that you can be functional and bound to success even if you leave the competitive principle aside. No ones sais that the lack of competitive behavior affects your performance. You can achieve a full yield of performance just because you love what you do, while competition, though it seems like a powerful boost in that direction, eventually leads to ego, envy, division, gossip, unfair hidden strategies, and disconnection.

Then, this decayed state of consciousness will only enforce the illusion that everybody is your enemy, while the urge to fight gets stronger, making it worse, until you reach despair. The perfect way to fail.

Competition sucks, and it’s just one of the symptoms of perceiving the road to success as a constant need for battle as you socially align your principles with the external world.

The Struggle

This inner struggle takes many forms: from choosing healthy principles, goals and values to establishing the right mindset and discipline in all your activities.

Before minding the environment, you take care of your mind and all its weaknesses.

Where will you take that energy from, when fighting the outside world, if there are no resources inside of you?

That is why you have to dig deep for that internal source of optimism and enthusiasm, that is determined by the balanced chemistry of your healthy principles.

If you think about it, success is an equation consisting in your desire to obtain something you want.

If you want many things that are hard to obtain, you have to fight harder. Society tells us to always aim for more, for as many things that we don’t even need, so we think the only valid solution to this equation is: fight hard!

However, there’s a much simpler approach to this equation: if you are happy with just the right amount of things, success will come easily. So instead of hurting ourselves by wanting things we don’t need, we should struggle to reduce our needs to common-sensical limits. Then, success will be our natural state. Many people might not understand that and consider you „unsuccessful” from their viewpoint, but who cares?