How do you measure your success in life?

earllogjam

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What is your personal criteria of how you are doing in life? By what standards do you measure yourself? Friends, money, accomplishments, convictions?

Is it really important to you that you are successful? Does it affect your outlook and actions you take in the future?

What is your idea of being successful?
 

Wyldgusechaz

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What is your personal criteria of how you are doing in life? By what standards do you measure yourself? Friends, money, accomplishments, convictions?

Is it really important to you that you are successful? Does it affect your outlook and actions you take in the future?

What is your idea of being successful?

Friendships and money. Also service to fellow man.

A lot of folks back away from the money issue because its hard to gain financial success and few are willing to make the effort to be financially successful. So they chickenshit out and say *oh money means nothing to me, I just want good friends and family.* what a crock. The key is to have all those things and money too. However I do commend people who have made great sacrifices to do work for the poor and destitute knowing they have little hope of striking it rich. Having more disposable income makes life better, there is no question.
 

numberseven

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I measure my success by my contentment with life and my ability to provide for my basic necessities. Therefore, I am successful if I have shelter, food, clothing, a source of affection/companionship, and if I am happy with how things are.
 

D_Fiona_Farvel

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Convictions above all else.
I want to reach the end of my life and know that I have lived right, with integrity and humanitarianism, having harmed as few as possible.
 
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deleted213967

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What is your personal criteria of how you are doing in life? By what standards do you measure yourself? Friends, money, accomplishments, convictions?

Is it really important to you that you are successful? Does it affect your outlook and actions you take in the future?

What is your idea of being successful?

Wow! So far, nothing about sexual prowess, right here on LPSG. This site is full of surprises...
 

earllogjam

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...dare I say it earl?.....

OK, gotta do it.

"HE WHO DIES WITH THE MOST TOYS, WINS"

Ugh - bits of your Reagan Youth oozing out here...like pus.

Speedo, were you ever in Junior Achievement?

"I work hard to play hard." I once heard that from a president of a Junior Achievement company and it made me cringe even back then.
 

D_Rod Staffinbone

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What is your personal criteria of how you are doing in life? By what standards do you measure yourself? Friends, money, accomplishments, convictions?

Is it really important to you that you are successful? Does it affect your outlook and actions you take in the future?

What is your idea of being successful?


at this point, more than at any time for me, it's about being happy.
some freedom to get back in touch with who i am as a person. i
had some financial success and major accomplishments earlier than most
(though it's all relative). getting back in touch with myself will help
me get to the next level.

btw everytime i read one of your posts, earllogjam, i hear it with brian's voice, the
dog from "family guy", reading it to me, quite a trick.

offroad
 

earllogjam

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btw everytime i read one of your posts, earllogjam, i hear it with brian's voice, the
dog from "family guy", reading it to me, quite a trick.

offroad

People actually read my posts here?

I was going to pick a Snoopy avatar but he just wasn't a good fit for my perky non-jaded personality here.


Back to the post-

R-E-S-P-E-C-T Isn't how much of that you get a good measure of your success?
 
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Gl3nn

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How you can see if you're successful? Simple: money!

People always say: money doesn't make you happy.
Well, sadly enough it does. Even just because it makes certain things in your life easier. Of course money alone doesn't make you happy. Friendship and all is important as well. But without money... you won't be happy. The amount of money that makes you happy... that depends on you.

But you don't have to be successful to be happy. If you're happy with who you are and what you accomplished and you can pay the bills, that's enough.
 

ManlyBanisters

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Friendships and money. Also service to fellow man.

A lot of folks back away from the money issue because its hard to gain financial success and few are willing to make the effort to be financially successful. So they chickenshit out and say *oh money means nothing to me, I just want good friends and family.* what a crock. The key is to have all those things and money too. However I do commend people who have made great sacrifices to do work for the poor and destitute knowing they have little hope of striking it rich. Having more disposable income makes life better, there is no question.

There you go again - judging people by your own standards as if they are the only way to go. Money means relatively little to many people not because they don't have it but often because, like me, they have gone through periods of having high disposable income and having no disposable income and have found that their happiness is not directly proportional to either state. Some of the times in my life when I have been most content in and with myself are the times when I have had next to nothing. At those times I have felt like a far more successful human being than the times when I have been unhappy. Generally speaking, our 'needs' rise to meet, and often exceed, our income - so some people are never happy, never feel successful, however much they have because someone else always has more.

That being said - pretty much everyone here, reading this post on this site is rich. Comparitively speaking. Me for example - I'm working for much lower pay than I could be - that's a choice because this job affords me the precious resource of time that allows me to be a fulltime mother too - but my current debt is about 5% of my current assets. So compared to 95% of the rest of the world I'm very well off - and compared to about 80% of the rest of the world I'm off the fucking scale.

But that isn't how I measure my success - the main way in which I measure my success is by how happy and comfortable the people I love, and specifically those who depend on me, are. Material comfort plays a part in that - but it is not the main factor. My own happiness and comfort are an important part too, just not as important. I guess I'm talking about loving and being loved in return as a measure of success.

(1) how closely I come to discerning "truth"

(2) how closely what I do, or will have done with my life, is in accord with 1

I like that - but how can you tell what 'truth' is?
 
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earllogjam

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:rolleyes:

No. They wouldn't even let me in the door because I didn't own any Izod or Brooks Brothers clothing.

Hmmm, any over achiever was welcome Speedo.

But they did have a jar by the door to check your brain in before you discussed how to sell the worthless crap you make. Hey- that about sums up capitalism in America!
 

SpeedoGuy

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Seriously, though.

I'm seeking contentment in this life: learning to be grateful for what I am and what I have much more than grousing about what I'm not. That's easy for me to say but less easy to accomplish.

I didn't imagine I'd ever quote "big hat" country music for philosophy but there's a Gary Allan song titled Learning to Live with Me that pretty much sums it up for me and my quest for contentment.
 

earllogjam

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Seriously, though.

I'm seeking contentment in this life: learning to be grateful for what I am and what I have much more than grousing about what I'm not. That's easy for me to say but less easy to accomplish.

I didn't imagine I'd ever quote "big hat" country music for philosophy but there's a Gary Allan song titled Learning to Live with Me that pretty much sums it up for me and my quest for contentment.

I've heard that after a certain age you begin to accept yourself and your limitations and just feel more comfortable with yourself as you just know yourself better and realize you have lived more days than you have left so why not make the short time you have left on this earth happy.

Unfortunately I am fearful to confront, to acknowledge and to accept my limitations, limitations of which I am painfully aware of by this point in my life. I fear that I am now all that I'm gonna be and that there is no more to life than this, this humdrum existence. Sometimes I think it is the chief cause of my unhappiness. Something that I haven't been able to shake my entire life. True happiness still eludes me and it bothers me immensely at times when things aren't going right in my life.
 

D_Bob_Crotchitch

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But you don't have to be successful to be happy. If you're happy with who you are and what you accomplished and you can pay the bills, that's enough.

I'd say what you described was a successful person's life. To be happy with your life, to be at peace, and to be contented is a successful life.

I used to measure my success by the money I made, the things I owned, and all of my accomplishments. I learned very quickly from a bad illness that it could easily be taken away.

Now, my life's successes are measured in moments. Did I make someone's life a little better. Did I give a hurting person a little moment of comfort, was I able to help someone believe in themselves, and see themselves as someone of value?
 

ballsaplenty2156

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WOW!! What a great question!! I'm just a bit out of my teens, so judging my success in life would certainly be on a pretty lame scale at this point. I know, for me it's not going to be based on money or "stuff", like how many of the latest "toys" do I own.
I'd like to think as my life progresses, it will be a matter of leaving this earth a better place than I found it, in whatever meager way I can accomplish.
Relationships with people are incredibly important, but I'm not sure that would be an accurate judgment of success.
Defining one's life in measures of actual success is thought-provoking and deep for me.
I'll give it more thought and get back to this thread.