Quotes About Success

Do you quantify your own success in terms of money, power, or prestige?

What workaholics truly crave isn't work per se; it is success. They kill themselves working for money, power, and prestige because these are forms of approval, applause, and compliments—which, like all addictive things, from cocaine to social media, stimulate the neurotransmitter dopamine.[8]

There is a wonderful little passage in the Confessions of Saint Augustine, written around the year 400. He starts by describing his insatiable cravings for success in the eyes of others: "I panted after honors . . . boiling with the feverishness of consuming thoughts." (Every success addict can relate to this.) He then describes coming across a beggar in the streets of Milan, whom he secretly admired: "He was joyous, I anxious; he void of care, I full of fears.

But to be constantly noticed, to achieve specialness, doesn't come cheap. Apart from a few reality TV stars and accidental celebrities, success is brutal work and takes sacrifices.

Unhappy is he who depends on success to be happy," wrote Alex Dias Ribeiro, a former famous Formula 1 race car driver. "For such a person, the end of a successful career is the end of the line. His destiny is to die of bitterness or to search for more success in other careers and to go on living from success to success until he falls dead. In this case, there will not be life after success."[12] Making

And so it is when we professionally self-objectify: Our work is our medium, which is our message. We love the image of ourselves as successful, not ourselves in true life. But you are not your job, and I (as I have to remind myself) am not mine.

intimate friendship, whether it be from the companionate love of your spouse or an Aristotelian "perfect friend," is better than any professional success. It will salve the wounds of professional decline like nothing else.

hold your success lightly—be ready to change as your abilities change. Even if your worldly prestige falls, lean into the changes.

Consider J. S. Bach, whom we met earlier. He loved his work, and enjoyed his early success, but he knew what mattered most.

The decline problem is a double whammy, then: we need ever-greater success to avoid dissatisfaction, yet our abilities to stay even are declining. No, it's actually a triple whammy, because as we try to stay even, we wind up in patterns of addictive behavior such as workaholism, which puts strivers into unhealthy relationship patterns at the cost of deep connection to spouses, children, and friends.

Many success addicts confess that they feel like losers when they see someone else who is yet more successful.

Wrapped up in their fear of falling behind, success-addicted workaholics—like all people controlled by their addictive behavior—leave little room in their lives for friends or family.

researchers have long found that social comparison lowers our happiness.[29] But you hardly need a study to tell you that—just spend a few hours browsing Instagram and see how bad you feel about yourself. This is because you are comparing your success with your perception of others' success, as depicted in information of dubious accuracy. Nothing good comes of this.

Success, the fruit of excellence, becomes an addiction. All because of pride. A cousin of pride is fear.

Fear animates all success addicts. As philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote in his Confessions, "I was not afraid of punishment, I was only afraid of disgrace; and that I feared more than death, more than crime, more than anything else in the world."[26] Can you relate to this?

What I found was a hidden source of anguish that wasn't just widespread but nearly universal among people who have done well in their careers.

Great gifts and achievements early in life are simply not an insurance policy against suffering later on. On the contrary, studies show that people who have chased power and achievement in their professional lives tend to be unhappier after retirement than people who did not.

She doesn't live in the past. Many other stars have not fared so well.

But hold your success lightly—be ready to change as your abilities change. Even if your worldly prestige falls, lean into the changes.

At work, successful people are lonely in a crowd.

The more control you have over your life, the more responsible you feel for your own success - or failure.

Do you dream about being remembered for your professional successes?

He possessed an unflinching belief that all people — the poor, children, the elderly — were human assets, waiting to be developed so they could earn their success.

But at the same time, a bloated welfare state that nudges middle-class citizens away from the labor force is moving our society away from the dignity of earned success.