The Measure of Your Success

Success — The One Unpardonable Sin Against One’s Fellows — Ambrose Bierce

On this Friday I posed the question to myself — How do I measure success?

Is it wealth I’ve accumulated, which is none so if that is my measure I flunked.

Is it fame? Is it an impressive resume’. Is it living a long life? Is it fulfilling all one’s dreams? The list goes on and on, but are any of those things truly important?

Ambrose Bierce so wittingly points out success comes with a price, most certainly jealousy and resentment from others.

I think at my age I also realize that the measure of success changes frequently over time. As a child, success was measured by pleasing one’s parents and peers. As an athlete, one measured success by the final score and individual performance. As a student, success was measured by grades. As a lawyer, often success was measured by a jury verdict, not by the right or wrong of one’s client.

Over time we learned that success maybe wasn’t the be all, end all, we once thought it was. Sometime it was how we arrived at a certain place, and sometimes it was simply survival that meant we had succeeded.

Int the end of my meditation, I came away thinking that success wasn’t what it was all cut out to be. But how I measure success is. How I measure it says a lot about me and what is important in my life.

That’s why I ask, how do you measure success, and what does it say about you. You just might be surprised at your answer.

I was, and I think it will make for interesting conversation tonight over dinner with Suzy.

About the author

Webb Hubbell is the former Associate Attorney General of The United States. His novels, When Men Betray, Ginger Snaps, A Game of Inches, The Eighteenth Green, and The East End are published by Beaufort Books and are available online or at your local bookstore. When Men Betray won one of the IndieFab awards for best novel in 2014. Ginger Snaps and The Eighteenth Green won the IPPY Awards Gold Medal for best suspense/thriller. His latest, “Light of Day” will be on the bookstands soon.

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