How do we define success? Discuss with reference to the work of Alfred Adler.
by
beautiful21 (student)
In our culture we tend to glamorize success, especially when it's hard-earned or beats the odds: individuals who succeed despite great obstacles; people who profit from courageous business ventures; those who rise to fame because they persevere; and some whose great talents become recognized. We also celebrate those who lived through traumatic circumstances that have, in some cases, taken the lives of others. There are also less visible but significant successes, relative to the achievements of others, such as maintaining a profitable business when competitors are failing, keeping your job when your colleagues are laid off, or having a pleasurable and secure connection with someone when your friends are lonely and unattached. In any case, there can be a price that comes with success.
Success can be calculated in a variety of ways, and achieving one's ideals is a primary way in which it can be measured. A motivating force in one's life is striving for a sense of worthiness in an effort to match the image of one's ideals, and to avoid failures and shortcomings that become the internal criteria for guilt and shame. Approaching one's ideals can bolster a sense of feeling wanted, needed, and important and can mask feelings of vulnerability. Although guilt, shame, and their accompanying vulnerability can hide beneath success, they can become conscious as a sense of fraudulence or anxiety about not truly being worthy. When you strive to succeed you idealize where you want to be, even imagining that the people who reside in those coveted positions are happy and fulfilled. But once you get there you might recognize that the same human vulnerabilities you sought to disown with a new indentity still exist, even if they are in a different form.
