Aug 3, 2009

The Notion Of Success



Quite a few people, especially my relatives regard me as a highly successful person...Maybe because of these NIT , IIM tags, may be because of a relatively well - off academic credentials etc.. Somehow I get irritated when people talk to me with such a kind of perspective..

Let me confess - I'm someone who has missed achieving 90 % of what I aimed at in terms of academics.. Even when my parents talk to my brothers preaching them to aim at my academic credentials, I'm least impressed... Because for me, the notion of success is something higher.. I'm happy at what I'm... But I don't think anyone should aim at my career / acad levels and try to match those .. Because I see higher pedestals of what we can call as success .

At every point in life, I had this habit of trying to match myself to people whom i thought were the 'role models of success' ... I could not emulate most of them..But as a strange turnaround, I often saw that, those people whom I benchmarked as successful in one stage , didnt do very well in the subsequent stage of life...Like there were people - seeing whose performace in the IIT entrance exams and all I thought 'these were highest manifestations of success and its them that I should try to emulate' .. I had this habit of tracking the life of people like these either from the net or through some acquaintances... And I happened to learn that many of them didnt perform pretty well in their engineering college life...maybe they were in a wrong place , maybe circumstances were different ..etc... But whatever be it, success in one stage is neither a pre-requisite , nor a guarantee that you will be successful in the subsequent stage..

Same case repeated during engineering life ..Some of the people whom I thought could be marked as role models, cutout a sorry figure for themselves in professional life... In the sense , the DNA of success was something different for each stage.. Same with CAT & IIMs...Some of the guys who used to ace mock tests & CAT , I hear , have fared badly in IIMs ( not just academically... but in many aspects ) .. And if we include the realm of personal life , the picture again gets murkier...Many of these academic stars have had pretty bad personal lives...Many ppl who have happy personal life are nowhere near academic success..
I know I might sound a bit crazy, but still can't help... 'Is there an absolute measure for success ?? ' .