Alisha Patel's Definition of Success

Is it getting straight A’s throughout high school and making the honor roll? Is it having a full lunch table of friends begging for your attention? Is it flaunting the newest iPhone and a matching glitter case? Is it being the star athlete who spends 5 hours a day at the gym? Or is it getting to vaunt your college sweatshirt after getting into the college of your dreams? What is success?

Your path to success should begin with one simple question, “When was the last time I felt successful?” Once you have the answer to that, ask yourself, “Now why does this make me successful?” Keep asking this question over and over until you get to the root of it. Remember, there is no right answer, it’s up to you to come up with your own personalized root.

Now ask anyone around you, ask your parents, your friends, your dog. You won’t get the same answer from anyone. Everyone has their own definition: being happy, having a great job, making a six-figure salary, whatever is most important to them. Once you have the answer to what success could be, it's time to think about failure. Just as there isn’t any common definition of success, there cannot be a common definition of failure. Merriam Webster explains failure to be “the inability to perform a duty or performance.” Define failure, then define your failures.

So when people ask me what I think success it, I tell them, success is defined by failure. It’s as simple as that, my own success is defined by my personal failure. You will, in fact, fail. And fail again. And again. But at the end of the day, these failures are what make your successes possible. As an anonymous legend once said, “Champions are not defined by their victories, but shaped by their losses.” I am a champion in my own mind, shaped by my own losses. I may lose, I may lose over and over again, but I know I will become stronger because of it. I will learn and overcome from my failure, and I will be successful in the end. I have failed multiple times, and each and every time, I have come out on top, feeling successful and on top of the world because I’ve overcome another thing I was once unsuccessful at, and I’ve just then become a champion.

Have I gotten a 100% on every test I’ve ever taken? No. Did I spend hours and hours at the gym everyday just to get cut from the varsity team? Yes. Did I make a six-figure, or even a five-figure salary this past summer? No. My point is, before I was able to succeed at anything, I had to fail, and I had to realize that I had to work for it. Failing encourages you to work hard for whichever successes you truly want.

Remember back to earlier when we tried to evaluate the root of success. My root of success is failure. Success is simply a derivative of failure. You cannot have success without at first having failure. There would be no bar to compare yourself to and nowhere to set your goals from. So while it is important to strive to reach your goals, to try new things, to be happy, and to follow your passion, it is also important to fail. And remember, it is okay to not be successful 100% of the time. In fact, failing is one of the best ways to really appreciate success when you finally achieve it.

High school is the time you should be evaluating your personal achievements thus far, and asking yourself, “Have I been meeting my own definition of success?” But it is also the time to make mistakes, and to learn from them. You need to set your own goals and reach for them. Are you going to create your own mountain to climb, or are you going to let someone else build one for you?