Measures of success
- Ability to help and inspire others less fortunate than you.
- Ability to contribute to society.
- Ability to help and inspire those around you, especially in long-term ways.
- Number of very high quality friendships
Misconceptions of measures of success
- Net worth
- Salary, or how much money one makes
- Material possessions
- Academic test scores (e.g. VCE scores)
Of course, there are some basic things I have not listed because I felt that they were too obvious, such as keeping healthy and being able to survive financially. I contemplated listing 'level of academic education' somewhere, but I decided that it would vary from person to person according to their chosen career, e.g. a medical researcher would obviously need a high level of specialised academic education compared to a professional chess player.
I feel that I am being rather hypocritical because I find myself mindlessly working towards some of the dot points in the latter list. This is frightening because I can recognise that they are only superficially important. I feel this is because such pursuits have been drummed into me through media, and sometimes even friends and family. I have no direct solution to such a problem, except to keep an open mind and to keep my options open where possible.
There is one quality I am undecided about. It is the 'ability to immortalise oneself in a positive way – i.e. to establish one’s name in history'. When I asked this of a friend, he also agreed that this point is difficult to categorise. I think the reason I am reluctant to place this in the former list is because all the points there are relatively selfless, but there are clear selfish motivations in trying to put your own name in the history books.
Overall, priorities differ from person to person. There are many people I know who would have 'net worth' listed in the initial list. Nevertheless, I believe the vast majority of people would agree with the selfless qualities listed at the top.
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