STRAIGHT TALK
MARK BARNES: Success is achieving the outcome you deliberately seek — and enjoying it
I don’t like lists. I saw the cover of the 4th Annual Africa Forbes magazine’s Under 30 publication, which had the rather bold title "90 young entrepreneurs across three sectors with the fire and fury to change the world". I wondered about two things: what is success, and are there obvious characteristics, either observed or necessary, in those people who achieve their goals? Over the years, I’ve changed my measures of success, more than once. At first, they seemed obvious, measurable and comparable — but there’s more to success than that. It’s at once simpler and more complex. It’s not so much about money as it is about the absence of money. It’s not so much about winning as it is about not losing. It’s actually about playing in a fair game — there’s no victory shallower than an undeserved or, worse still, cheated one. Success is not only defined by the outcome you seek, but the consequence of it. "Changing the world" presupposes not only a definition of what is wrong, but a demons...
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