Why success is not the ultimate goal

The idea of success has been deeply engrained in our brains, adding to our greatest dreams a full dose of fear and driving us to extreme levels of exhaustion in order to fulfill all the false expectations we have placed on ourselves.

We are being bombarded every day with speeches of "heroes" about the importance of pushing forward even though we are on the verge of breaking; of never quitting even though in the road to success we may have redefined our purpose; of breaking our limits even though this isn't a sign of strength, but an ill desire to control every aspect of our lives.

Yet we continue. Because giving up is an outright declaration of weakness and we should never be anything less than strong.

But what I realized over the last couple of months is that the kind of strength that lies in accepting the fact that we don't always need to be climbing a new mountain is greater than the one that lies in craving success.

Here are the three main reasons why success isn't the ultimate goal in life:

1) Winning means losing and losing doesn't always mean learning.

We are willing to sacrifice so many things in order to get to the point where we can call ourselves successful. We think it's okay to sacrifice our energy, the time we spend with our loved ones and our emotional wellness in general, if that will lead us one step closer to our dreams of success.

Yet what will lead us closer to a false idea of success, will move us farther away from happiness. But that's okay, because we're going to end up becoming stronger and wiser, right? No. We'll end up becoming miserable if we're always after a goal, if we never stop to enjoy the beauty that hides in the present moment.

2) Success will give us what we want, not what we need.

We can achieve everything we've wanted to achieve, have the career we imagined as ideal when we were kids and still have that indescribable urge to accomplish more, do more, be more. That urge stems from an inability to sit still for a moment and appreciate our accomplishments. That inability is created by the belief that success will make our dreams come true and thus, we will be happy.

Yes, our dreams will come true if we succeed. But if we have given everything to get to that point of success, our dreams won't even matter because we will have been left with nothing.

3) Success is associated with sensibility.

I'm sure that all of you who have achieved something big at some point in your life know that emotions will only perplex your process to success and throw in your way more obstacles than lifelines.

And because the secret to success lies in our ability to remain logical, calm and focused, it is a subsequent that it will not offer us lasting emotions of happiness and fulfillment. We can't expect something that feeds off logic to give us powerful emotions. Success can't make us happy if it's not accompanied by other factors, such as the relationships we have with our loved ones and with ourselves; factors that do have an emotional background.

In conclusion, success is great. Yearning for success gives us a purpose and a motive to do amazing things. But it doesn't have to define us. We are not what we have achieved. We are more than that. Life is more than that.

And if you want my humble opinion, happiness should be the ultimate goal in life, not success. And the one doesn't always bring the other.

American Queen