By defining what success is to you personally and taking the time to write it down you automatically move your life in that direction. Hopefully others will follow your example.

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How do I define success for myself?

Well, there are many steps in my goal of being successful. They are all intertwined, though; if I can’t have one part of my definition of success, then I haven’t succeeded.

For instance, two parts of success, for me, are having a clear conscience and being financially secure. If I have to lie, cheat, or steal in order to have enough money to be secure, then I haven’t succeeded.

Here’s my idea of success:
Honesty
Respect
Financial Security
Being a “sage”
Having a clear conscience
Having unconditional trust from a select few
Gaining the habit of cleaning the litter box out daily
Creating useful tools which others enjoy

Those aren’t in any specific order, except for the order that I thought of them in. Of course, I tend to think of what I view as most important first, and I think that honesty is the cornerstone of so much in our lives. It isn’t just honesty with other people, but it is honesty with ourselves as well. In fact, it is especially honesty with myself that I feel has pushed me the closest to being successful.

Gaining the respect of others is important for me, because I tend to live up to people’s expectations more often than not. If I gain people’s respect, then it is easier for me to do the respectable thing… It’s a system which feeds on itself.

Financial security is important because it removes a lot of temptation from my life. I’ve never heard of a rich man stealing bread. The less that I have to worry about where my next meal is coming from, the more time I can spend fulfilling the other aspects of success.

Being a “sage” comes back to respect… While I do enjoy being respected for working hard, I realize that my body will probably fail before my mind does. My hips have already gone bad, which prevents me from lifting large weights, so I need to concentrate on gaining knowledge that I can share.

Having a clear conscience is vitally important… It includes both doing things which I know are right, as well as forgiving myself and others of past mistakes, and realizing a mistake for what it really is.

Unconditional trust is put in there instead of love, because it is easy to say that you love someone, but the word ‘trust’ isn’t diluted nearly as much by overuse.

Cleaning the litter box is important to me, because if I can successfully learn that habit, then I can learn (and unlearn) any habit.

Creating useful tools is listed because I’m a programmer. If I can’t write programs that people find useful, then what use am I?