Success: Is It Really About Achieving What You Want?

This is literally the promise made by the self-help industry. Gurus from this industry, those who have acquired some “mystical” knowledge, and who claim to have mastered the laws that govern the universe and life, are unanimous: Man can achieve anything he wants. Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich, asserted that whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve. 

Though this promise and N. Hill’s assertion might be true, can achieving whatever one wants be considered as being successful?

When Achievement Yields a Negative Outcome

From Glory to Disgrace

In 1972, an 11 year old stuttering Jamaican boy migrates to Canada with his mother and siblings. The boy, being fifth in a family of six children, used to play outdoors, swim and run at every opportunity in his native country. He particularly liked running. Inspired by his older brother, a local running star, he wanted to be like his country man Donald Quarrie and the Trinidadian athlete Hasely Crawford who were among the world’s top sprinters during the 1970s.
In Canada, after graduating from high school, not without difficulties due to his stammering problems, he joined the Scarborough Optimist Track Club where he began training with Coach Charles Francis who helped him become a remarkable runner. The young Jamaican Canadian progressively made a name in the athletic world. He won the outdoor World Championships in 1887 with a world-record time of 9.83 seconds and was proclaimed the fastest man on earth. The following year, he went on to bit his own record in the Summer Olympic Games in Seoul, South Korea and won the gold medal with a new world record of 9.79 seconds.
His name, as you might have guessed, is Ben Johnson. He was later on disqualified and stripped off both his Olympic and world titles after testing positive for steroids and this marked the beginning of his fall from grace. Can achievement be equated to success?

Here’s another example of a great achievement that yielded a negative outcome and that can help you answer this question.

Scandal in The Science World

Hwang Woo Suk, South Korean veterinarian, researcher and professor at Seoul National University announced in 1999 that he successfully created a cloned dairy cow. Despite the lack of scientific data to probe the validity of his work, he gained a national stature.
In 2004, Dr. Hwang made a greater impression when he published in the March 12 issue of Science (the academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; considered as one of the world’s most prestigious scientific journals) his success in creating an embryonic stem cell by cloning.
The following year he made another announcement about his successful cloning of a dog, an afghan hound named Snuppy.

Hwang became a celebrity in the world of science and a hero in Korea. He received the title of “Supreme Scientist” from the Korean Ministry of Science and Technology and an equivalent of millions of dollars in financial support for his work.

Shortly after his groundbreaking work, a researcher from the University of Pittsburgh who had worked with Hwang for two years announced that the reason behind his ended collaboration with the Korean Professor was a concern on egg donations in Hwang’s researches that led to the 2004 publication of his successful creation of an embryonic stem cell.

Soon afterwards, Roh sung-il, one of Hwang’s close collaborators, admitted that he had paid some women US$1,400 each for donating their eggs – eggs that were later used in Hwang’s research.
The discredit thrown over the work of the Korean scientist by these allegations led to an investigation that was conducted by an international panel set up in Seoul National University. Its conclusion: Hwang’s 2004 Science paper was fabricated.

On May 12, 2006, Hwang was “indicted on embezzlement and bioethics law violations linked to faked stem cell research.”(“Disgraced Korean Cloning Scientist Indicted”. New York Times, May 12, 2006.)

Achievement Is Not Success

Both Ben Johnson and Hwang Woo Suk achieved their major goals. The first nurtured the dream of becoming a great athlete like his idols Donald Quarrie and Hasely Crawford.
The later wanted to be a scientist. Because of their remarkable achievements, they all gained international fame in their respective fields. But unfortunately, they both experienced disgrace and rejection in the end. These two stories are eloquent illustrations showing that success is not only about achieving what one may want. In their book, “Just enough: tools for creating success in your work and life”, Laura Nash and Howard Stephenson argue, from a long study on what make people feel an enduring sense of real success, that success is made of four major components which are:

• Happiness
• Achievement
• Significance
• Legacy

Achievement alone does not define success.