Predefined Success Doesn’t Exist
One of the biggest downfalls of traditional education is that we are trained to work toward predefined goals. We are told that there is a standard measurement for success (letter grades) and your comprehension of a subject is reflected by your grade.
In real life, no one hands you the rubric and says, “Here’s how you win at life.” Some people might try to tell you what winning at life looks like, usually your spouse, parents, teachers, relatives, friends, etc, but at the end of the day it really comes down to you.
In the real world we are all responsible for coming up with our own definition of success and working toward that on a daily basis. The double edged sword of defining your own success is that no one can give you the answer, but no one can tell you that your definition is wrong.
It is also important to remember that success is relative. Your success is individual to you. No one else is going to want the exact same things you want in the exact same ways for the exact same reasons. Sure, people might come close, but everyone has different drivers and different motivation.
There is a lot of pressure in the world to push people through systems that are homogenized for substandard results. Don’t let those systems define your version of success.
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this story please give it some love by clicking the applause button (Hint: you can click that button up to 50 times for a story).
Alex Sejdinaj is a cofounder of South Bend Code School, GiveGrove, and Code Works. He loves building cool stuff that helps people.
