Questioner: Good afternoon and Jai Hind sir. My question to you is that people define success by different terms like influence, happiness, fame, name, etc. So, sir when did you start considering yourself success?
Acharya Prashant: First of all, thanks for inviting me here. I don't consider myself a success even today. So, your question is founded on an assumption when you say that when in the past did you start considering yourself a success? You are assuming that at some point I did or currently I do, no I don't.
I don't think there is any endpoint called success. As long as one is alive, there is more and more to be done continuously. One can declare herself successful only if the target is too small, or too limited. And then you can get close to the target or win it and say that you are successful, but that kind of declaration means nothing. One is then just fooling, pampering himself, does not mean much.
There can be milestones along the way. As you move, you can probably see that you are going past a few important points and even those points are important only relatively, right? Relative to where you currently stand, you might find that a few milestones mean much to you. But in the overall sense, in the absolute perspective, hardly anything that you have gone past makes much significance or holds too much meaning, right?
So, one has to continuously keep moving. This notion of becoming successful, this idea that by reaching a particular point or by having a certain accomplishment one can declare himself as successful is not very mature and is also dangerous, because it limits you. It tells you that there are certain things to be had, and more or less those things are universal, right? You want to have an educational degree, you want to have a job, you want to have money, you want to have a settled kind of life, and you want to be regarded highly in society, and if you have all these things then you start calling yourself successful.
