Lately I have posted many articles on becoming successful and wealthy. For me, these two have a tight connection with each other and with happiness and health. But I am a young person and lack, of course, the insight that comes with age-old experience. As do I lack the literary finesse of the great authors (give me a break here, okay?).
But what do those people think about success? How do they judge themselves after a lifetime? What can we learn from people like Albert Schweitzer, Oscar Wilde or Warren Buffet?
Albert Schweitzer
“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.”
This is something that strikes me as a great insight. It is also in line with my belief that in order to change something in the outside world; you have to first change yourself. ‘If you do as you always did, you will get what you always got’ is a phrase that my coach told me. I live by this phrase, and Albert Schweitzer has put this into perfect wording with regard to happiness and success.
Oscar Wilde
“Success means having the courage, the determination, and the will to become the person you believe you were meant to be.”
This again for me is closely related to changing yourself in order to change the world around you. The way I read this quote is that you need to do some serious soul searching to find out what it is that you truly desire to do. Once you know this, you only have to make it happen. Believe it or not, but making it happen is the easy part.
Most people can tell you exactly why they shouldn’t do something. But there are but a few people who will actually be able to tell you what they truly want in life. Tell you in a way that you can visualize it, almost feel it. These are the people who will reach their goals. The others won’t. The others are stuck in a train station, with ample opportunities to go to places beyond their wildest dreams. But they don’t know where they really want to go, so they don’t go at all…
Warren Buffett
“Success in the end can be measured only by how many people truly love you out of those people you want to have love you.”
Most quotes from Buffett are about money. Of course they are, because Mr. Buffett is the world’s richest man so he ought to know quite a bit about the business of making money. But in my opinion this means that his quote on success in life is worth more than all quotes in the world about the same subject. Because most tend to define success as being rich. Well, here’s the richest man on earth … so what does he think about success?
That is the beauty of it. If you can truly look into your heart, you’ll know this quote is the ultimate truth. You may like to fool yourself into thinking that being rich will bring you success, but deep down you know it isn’t true. You simply can’t ‘buy a million dollars worth of love’. The world just doesn’t work that way. People just don’t work that way.
The pitfall of the young
When I read these insights by people who I deem much smarter than myself, it becomes clear to me that there is such a thing as ‘the pitfall of the young’. This pitfall has its origins, I believe, in the fact that for youth, time seems endless. And thus money seems more important than time.
But nothing could be further from the truth. Every second that ticks away … is never coming back. Time is like a ball rolling downhill; each distance travelled cannot be undone. Money on the other hand … money is like rainwater.; endless in supply. You can accumulate it in a tank and then lose it by leaving the tap open. But you can always accumulate it again.
So when I read these things I think about the things that deep in my heart I know are important. And I try to balance my time equally between the things that I find important. Because there isn’t always a tomorrow.
Thu, Oct 22, 2009
Self Improvement