Success

The man of virtue makes the difficulty to be overcome his first business, and success only a subsequent consideration.
Confucius

Many of us long to be successful. We want to impress our friends and family. We want to be able to drive the fancy car and live in a luxurious mansion and go on exotic vacations. We want to have the lifestyle of the rich and famous. We are so fascinated by how these people live that we read the tabloids when we go to the grocery store, and devour every love affair, every scandal, every outfit that these people have. It's as though our own lives were painfully boring so we have to seek escape through reading about the lifestyles of someone more successful than ourselves.

But we don't have to be rich and famous to be successful. To be successful simply means to accomplish your goal. A parent of well-adjusted children is just as successful as any celebrity. So is anyone whose profession involves directly helping the public (doctor, police, firefighter, teacher etc). So is anyone who is doing well with their own business. And so, probably, are you. We tend to ignore our own successes because they never seem as impressive as the successes of someone else. But that is the wrong yardstick to compare them to. All that really matters is that we succeeded today where we failed yesterday.

In order to be successful, we must have a goal that is important to us. We must have an obstacle to overcome, a problem to solve. So the man of virtue makes the difficulty to be overcome his first business. The most important thing of all in determining how successful you are, is simply how big an obstacle or problem you had to overcome on the way to being successful. The harder the battle, the sweeter the victory. By that time, the outer rewards for success are actually not as important as the pride and confidence you feel when you know that you acheived a difficult and important goal.