Project Kengikat

What Is Success

// September 6th, 2010 // Uncategorized

I’ve been getting lots of videos and messages sent to me regarding “success” I’ve also had some conversations with people and have watched videos from people on YOUTUBE speaking about success. In every encounter “success” was tied to money or things that are related to money. You know like clothes, shoes, cars bling, bling, and things of this nature.

After listening and hearing all of this I thought I would ask people what success is, what it looks like, how we measure what success is. Even in doing this I ran into people who seem to have a very different outlook on what success is and who can be considered successful then my outlook on what success.

However when I started to ask people who are of the same mindset as myself, the answers began to sound very much like mine. I started hearing things like character, integrity, truth, peace and love. The answers that began to come from people on my YOUTUBE channel even began to change as well.

It seems we’ve been sold this fairytale as to what success is, where it comes from and what it looks like and a great many of us have believed it and will continue to believe it without question. We’ve been told that success means a fancy office, a house, a nice car, big bank accounts, 401k’s and vacations. We’ve been told that success is all the things that can be taken away as soon as we fall from grace, so to speak. We’ve been told that in order to feel and be successful people must clap for us, pat us on our backs and say nice things about us. Success is the white picket fence and the 2.5 kids with the Labrador or Golden Retriever.

However when we really stop to take even a small glance, none of what we view as success has anything to do with us. It has everything to do with others and things we can collect. At the end of the day, when it is all said and done all we really have is a lot of stuff that don’t mount to anything other then stuff.

Before people had any clue  that I was homeless, I asked if homeless people could be considered a super hero or successful and every answer I received was “no”, but more then this the answers were filled with such hatred and disregard for homeless people. This wasn’t because homeless people are bad people, but they don’t have any “stuff” that appears to be of any use to anyone else and our views of people who are homeless is one of “failure” or “worthless” but our view of people who drive BMW’s is “successful”

I can only speak for me, when I speak of success and it has a great deal to do with how I was raised. My folks never played the game, they never went along with the crowd, they demanded I think for myself, so at a very early age my view of success was something very different then most people I knew.

Going through 29 months of homelessness would make most people feel as unaccomplished, unfulfilled, and unsuccessful as ever. it will also make them feel very much like a failure with many family and so called friends reinforcing this  by turning their backs on them and treating them like outcasts. Furthermore the very places you must turn to for help also play key roles in drilling the “you’re a failure” motto and mind set into homeless people.

This is where I really struggled, because my success, my fulfillment, my accomplishments and all else were not tied people, places or things, they did not come from people places or things, so when all the fancy things that people view as success or successful we no longer there, I was still very much successful. I could still be a super hero in my eyes.

We are so busy keeping up with what others think and how others define us, that we’ve spent no time on how we view ourselves. We are so busy trying to please other people and love other people, that we do not know how to please or love ourselves. So busy looking for others to promote, succeed, accomplish and promote us, that we spend no time doing this for ourselves.

When all this comes to an end, when people are no longer doing what they use to for us, when all the fancy has started to fade or is all gone, when they gym body is now fat and out of shape, when the BMW is now 10 years old with lots of body damage and the picket fence has weeds growing around it and is no longer white, when that house is no longer the gem you thought it was, and that significant other has moved on to someone else, when that job no longer see’s you as the super hero and that name on the door is now a name on a badge what will you do? Where will you turn?

Success comes from YOU and the rest is just a bunch of stuff. So when people or life take your stuff away, your success is in tact along with your integrity and strength of character.