Success

Since I use the words "success" and "successful" throughout this text, I think it is important at the outset that I define those terms.

As I use it, "success" has nothing to do with prestige symbols, but with creative accomplishment. Rightly speaking no man should attempt to be "a success," but every man can and should attempt to be "successful." Trying to be "a success" in terms of acquiring prestige symbols and wearing certain badges leads to neuroticism, and frustration and unhappiness. Striving to be "successful" brings not only material success, but satisfaction, fulfillment and happiness. Noah Webster defined success as "the satisfactory accomplishment of a goal sought for." Creative striving for a goal that is important to you as a result of your own deep-felt needs, aspirations and talents (and not the symbols which the "Joneses" expect you to display) brings happiness as well as success because you will be functioning as you were meant to function. Man is by nature a goal-striving being. And because man is "built that way" he is not happy unless he is functioning as he was made to function as a goal-striver. Thus true success and true happiness not only go together but each enhances the other.

During the past decade, a revolution has been quietly going on in the fields of psychology, psychiatry, and medicine. New theories and concepts concerning the "self" have grown out of the work and findings of clinical psychologists, practicing psychiatrists and cosmetic or so-called "plastic surgeons." New methods growing out of these findings have resulted in rather dramatic changes in personality, health, and apparently even in basic abilities and talents. Chronic failures have become successful.

Understanding the psychology of the self can mean the difference between success and failure, love and hate, bitterness and happiness. The discovery of the real-self can rescue a crumbling marriage, recreate a faltering career, transform victims of ‘personality failure.' On another plane, discovering your real-self means the difference between freedom and the compulsions of conformity.