There is no greater honor than the feeling of accomplishment. Whether it involves attaining a goal, meeting an expectation or obtaining a memento to commemorate some intangible victory, achievement of any sort is satisfying. It embodies a winner — the head honcho, the big cheese, the grand pooh-bah — who has conquered defeat, nature and adversity. But what is defeat? What is success? What is achievement?
To tackle the first two questions, one must first answer the last. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary offers two definitions. The first is “a result gained by effort.” The second is more rigid — “the quality and quantity of someone’s performance.”
The second definition measures the absolute, observable products of work, while the first relates more to the intangible ones that drive individual growth. In other words, the perception of achievement alters the definition of the term as well as what can be gained from it.
What it really means
In the search for success, one often loses sight of what “success” truly is. It is typical to look for absolute success in the form of something quantifiable, such as the number of wins or the size of someone’s bank account. Perhaps it’s just a western mentality; it may be something more.
However, its origins are buried deep inside the human psyche. The desire for absolute victory stems from a burning necessity for social acceptance. That’s why many people strive to be millionaires — to display their power and ultimately validate themselves in the eyes of others. It is also the mentality behind all the facades and material excesses in the world.
There are, however, exceptions to that rule. Success can also be defined as something relative, something intangible. This sort of achievement is experiential, based on improvements accumulated over time.
This is the most beautiful and valuable type of accomplishment. It thrives on self-comparison, the comparison of current performance to previous performance. For the healthy thinker, it motivates the sort of improvement that builds an individual’s self-esteem. Even if that person doesn’t earn unquestionable absolute success, he or she still improves as an individual and attains a higher level of performance.
A relative nature
True achievement is relative and cannot be accurately measured solely in absolute terms. Everything absolute in philosophy is relative anyway, so why draw the line at the directly observable? It is important to realize this when judging self-performance. To some degree, people need observable successes to serve as benchmarks for future self-improvement.
At the same time, it’s counterproductive to dwell on losses or revel in successes. Such behaviors prevent learning from taking place. Furthermore, they hinder the ability to accurately assess the observable improvements that needed to be measured in the first place. Only through constant learning do people mature into responsible individuals who know their limits and, even more valuably, know the limits of restraint.
Achievement is the pinnacle of a mountain built on the skeletons of previous failures. Don’t let failures bury you. And, even more importantly, don’t revel too much in your perceived success. After all, it’s all relative.
Andrew Blitman is a native of Cooper City, Florida, who writes about thinking positively and critically about the ways of the world. His father, Bruce Blitman, writes a column called “Resolving Your Differences” for Smart Business Florida, and helped edit this contribution, which is an excerpt from Andrew’s book “The Blitman Anthology,” available on Amazon.com.
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