Everybody wants to be successful in their life, no matter what! Being successful has become the ‘in-thing’ in the last few years.  Since a very young age I have also been trained or rather bought up to become successful in life. But what exactly is success and how can you be successful? In my twenty-third year of life, I can’t help but contemplate on the very notion of success.

Being born into this post-feminist era, I have had plenty of women preaching me on success. They reiterate the necessity of becoming “successful” in life but not many have explained to me what it means to be successful. And with the rest of them preaching on success, I can’t help becoming more cynical than usual.

With success becoming the new buzzword, I myself have tried to become successful in life. I don’t know if I have succeeded in my pursuit of becoming successful, but I am sure I have become all the more perplexed! Thanks to all my well-wishers for enlightening me on the necessity of becoming successful. Getting back to my point, success to me is a mystified phenomenon. And I have my reasons for considering it that way. Success is not something that can be measured and there aren’t any yardsticks to fathom it. In my quest to understand success, I realize that, one has to be really lucky to be successful for luck is a fickle minded bitch.

Success is defined mostly in terms of being powerful and wealthy, and of course being on par with men (that goes without saying). But in doing so aren’t we generalizing “success” and narrowing its scope? Are power and wealth the only criteria for determining success? I beg to differ here because I feel that success depends on perspectives. Perspectives differ from person-to-person and are multifarious. What I think of success may not be the success you think of.

In my view success is not something achieved by the paid class. A home maker is equally successful when related to a career woman. A freelance writer is no short of success when compared to an accomplished writer in a firm. It about the choice you make in life that determines your success. And, as long as long as you are happy with the choices you make, have no regrets and continue cherishing the big or little you have achieved.

So, like I said it is not just career, power or wealth that determines one’s success; happiness is a key ingredient in the making of success. No matter how successful you are as a career person or a family man or the combination of both, ultimately your happiness and contend determines the success of your life. And also, it is not a mandate to pretend to be successful when you are not.

Success is different for different people. It does not come with clear cut definitions, yardsticks or benchmarks. So, live your life to the fullest; find happiness and success in your respective niche.