Are there people out there who don't care about success

[African_weasel]

Hey everybody. I've been wondering if they are people out in the world who don't really care about being successful? I've been around people who did drugs and sold them, and they don't seem to care about anything expect when are they going to get high again. One day, I was talking to this girl I wrote about in my blog. She told me that she wanted to be a dentist, but it seems she is not doing anything to work towards it. So do any of you guys have ideas? Let me know down below.

 

[theglasscell]

Everyone has a different idea of success. A lot of people work hard to become teachers so they can make a difference in kid's lives. You can be a great teacher and successful in your career but you're never gonna make a lot of money. In NYC teachers make 60k at best and in most states it's much lower.

So if your definition of success is based on money or prestige than all teachers would be failures at life.

Same with cops. But if success to you means being a positive force in this world than investment bankers would be failures even though they are wealthy.

Most working fiction writers barely get by and have to live really cheaply, only about 1% get to be like Stephen King. But writing fiction for a living and interacting with fans can be a really satisfying life.

I have a friend who is a corporate lawyer and is making 200k a year at 27 years old. He still thinks of himself as a failure, he is never happy with his life. So I don't know what it will take to make him happy.

What other people think about your plans doesn't matter though. You have to figure out what makes you happy and pursue it.

 

[LeaningIntoTheMuse]

Sure, there are people out there who don't care about being successful.

But it depends on what you define as success. Do you mean somebody who is famous? Or someone who is just good at what they do?

Look at the way Steve Jobs is treated. He's treated as the highest level of genius, despite the fact that he never really invented anything; he just took other people's ideas and ran with them. Apple is really stolen from Bill Gates, who is the one who invented the personal PC...they were best friends, and they split and started separate companies, from what I remember.

Then look at Tim Berners-Lee. Who is that, you ask? He's the guy who invented the world wide web, or internet. He's the one who's responsible for us even having this forum online to talk on. He never gets mentioned, despite the fact that he not only invented the code that defines and transmits web pages, but he invented what was the very first web browser. Everything that is current now is built on what he created back in the early 90's, and what he presented to the government. And for your information, he never knew it would be such a big deal; the internet was created for the government to share information with each other, and another guy took it and presented it to the public, which gobbled it up (as any new technology will be.)

Do you want to be a rich guy like Steve Jobs, the public face of a company? Or do you want to be a poorer guy like Berners-Lee, who is an actual inventor, but was never the face of his product?

 

[quintus]

Everyone has a different idea of success. A lot of people work hard to become teachers so they can make a difference in kid's lives. You can be a great teacher and successful in your career but you're never gonna make a lot of money. In NYC teachers make 60k at best and in most states it's much lower.

So if your definition of success is based on money or prestige than all teachers would be failures at life.

Same with cops. But if success to you means being a positive force in this world than investment bankers would be failures even though they are wealthy.

Most working fiction writers barely get by and have to live really cheaply, only about 1% get to be like Stephen King. But writing fiction for a living and interacting with fans can be a really satisfying life.

I have a friend who is a corporate lawyer and is making 200k a year at 27 years old. He still thinks of himself as a failure, he is never happy with his life. So I don't know what it will take to make him happy.

What other people think about your plans doesn't matter though. You have to figure out what makes you happy and pursue it.

Nothing to add! Very, very nicely put!