Definition of Success

[Music]

like a lot of you out there

i’ve lost at a lot of things i’ve lost

at numerous robotics competitions

and to science olympiad now this might

all sound really bad

but believe me when i say i’ve learned a

lot from all this

when i lost at science olympiad i told

myself i gave him my best shot

i thought about what i could do better

and i moved on

i decided that next year i won’t hold

off on my project until the very last

minute

when i lost it was disappointing yes but

it didn’t make me feel like a failure

or like i was worthless i know some of

you out there know exactly what i’m

talking about

now this mindset that i have is

partially in thanks to the way that my

parents brought me up they taught me

that just because you fail

that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a

failure

had i been taught differently though i

might have believed something else

i might have believed that i was a

failure or that i might not even be

successful

but based on what we all want to be

successful that’s a given

but what does success itself really mean

to me

success means accomplishment but

if you turn on the tv you’ll hear every

single news anchor imaginable talking

about

a young man who sold billions upon

billions of dollars off of an insane new

product that no one’s ever seen before

or how a young poor man sold all of his

belongings and now lives in a mansion

either way whenever we hear about

success any form of media really

it’s usually through money and we’ve

heard this for so often

and for so long that now we’ve come to

stereotype money as what it means to

succeed

and if this were true that would mean

that say if you love your job as a

barber

but you can barely pay your bills on

time you failed

and if you hate your job as a computer

salesman but you make 300 000

a year you succeeded you see the problem

with this

no matter where you go people will say

that you have to have money in order to

be successful

but that’s not entirely true in fact a

study in 2018 by purdue university

found out that once you hit around the

60 000 mark

for your income which is around middle

class

then money stops affecting how happy you

are

the very idea that money is not success

was actually implemented

into the carbon neutral country of

bhutan bhutan

is different from the rest of the world

in that they don’t measure the success

and wealth through gdp

gdp or gross domestic product is the way

almost every single country in the world

tells you how well

he may tell you all this it won’t tell

you how your country is how your country

feels

so what bhutan does instead is use

something called the happiness index

what this does is instead of measuring

wealth this measures how each citizen

feels towards their country

and measures the collective happiness of

their nation

through this they have become the

world’s first carbon neutral country in

the world

carbon neutral if you don’t know means

that every single drop of carbon dioxide

that goes into the atmosphere

there they’re able to bring it right

back down because the amount of trees

they have in their country

this is only possible because the amount

of public support they had for this

project

you see they put the welfare of their

citizens first

instead of their economy and they are

doing very well because of it

so tying this all back to what it means

to succeed

success is meant to be open-ended it’s

not meant to have one set definition

success could mean finishing a race even

though you know you might not win it

could mean giving your trial to contest

it could mean something as simple as

baking a cake

and sometimes success isn’t as cut and

dry as you want it to be

i know from experience for example when

i was checking my band placement results

i was disappointed to see that i didn’t

make varsity band

but i was happy to see that i also made

first chair in junior varsity band

which is really really good would you

consider this a failure

not if you measured it by the way that i

felt i felt that i did my best

and that made me feel proud so in the

end

it doesn’t matter if you fail by someone

else’s standards

what matters is that you did your best

what matters is that you feel satisfied

because when you do that’s when you know

you’re really successful

thank you

you