How Do You Define Success? A Millionaire’s Perspective
How do you define success? That was the question I asked 21 millionaires. Below are their answers. I think you’ll enjoy their authenticity, self-doubt, humility, confidence, and peace of mind – not just financially.
In my last post I shared their thoughts on failure, now I share their thoughts on how they define success. In a future post, I’ll share how they created success.
How do you define success?
Millionaire 1 Lee Carlson
“Taking care of your responsibilities, taking care of your family; feeding them, clothing them, and getting them started in life.”
Millionaire 3 Matt Given
“I don’t think I have that perspective yet. I haven’t figured out where the finish line is yet.”
Millionaire 9 Theresa Szczurek
“A combination of making a difference, contributing, and having deep, caring relationships in a way that I can support myself and my family while living with integrity. I have five overall goals in my life which define success.
One is being a strong, healthy, authentic self at the emotional, physical, psychological, and spiritual level. Another is loving connections with myself, fellow beings, God and spiritual forces, and nature. Third is contribution, my professional endeavor and meaningful work. Fourth is financial serenity and divine prosperity. I like making money and I want to make more to be even more financially secure. The fifth has to do with being in the flow – enjoying life in a joyful, passionate, optimistic state while being open to the opportunities. Those are the main five goals I have in my life and I feel if I can attain those, I will be successful.”
Millionaire 11 Mark Sanborn
“At this point in my life, success is living life in the way God intended for me to live it.
He wants us to be more like Him, which means to be more Christ-like. I’m a woeful example of that, but that’s the goal. The goal isn’t to have more or even just to be more, but to be more like Him.
Whether someone believes or agrees with your worldview, if you can be more like Christ, you’re going to positively impact them because His life and example were life-giving and enriching. For me the question is, ‘Would God be pleased with how I spend my time?’”
Millionaire 12 John Simcox
“First, the family. Right now my success is we have five great kids that are good people. They’re all hard workers. They have high ethics. All of our kids now have been to the temple, and I’m not putting that as a badge of honor on me, but I’m happy for them, what they are.”
Millionaire 13 Bill Begal
“I fight with it all the time because sometimes I think I’m very successful and other times I think I’m not really successful.
I’ve got a business, I’ve got property, and I’m able to go to Argentina for a week in the middle of the year. I’m successful because I was able to start a non-profit group with two friends. I’m successful because I have great friends.”
Millionaire 15 Cynthia McKay
“That’s a tough one. I don’t know if I can define success because there’s so much more out there. A lot of people equate making money with success and I don’t.
True success is when I sit down someday and go, ‘I’ve done it all. I’ve done everything in my life. Happy as a clam, I have no more ideas and that’s it for me.’ That’s probably success and it’s never going to happen.”
Millionaire 16 Lane Nemeth
“Accomplishing something that you set out to do. That can be tomorrow’s idea, it could be running a $100 million business. There’s a million, trillion steps along the way so really it’s a matter of waking up in the morning and saying, ‘I’m going to accomplish X today’ and then doing it. It makes you feel good when you accomplish what you say you’re going to do.”
Millionaire 20 Rob Emrich
“Success has to be a relative idea of what you can do, how much meaning you can provide for other people based on your capabilities and your capacity.”
Millionaire 21 Richard Zuschlag
“Creating a better community with better jobs, with happy people, and being able to make a decent living. I don’t think it’s all about money. I just worked real hard and the moneymaking came by accident.”
One of the things I enjoyed most about my interactions with these successful people was their attitude of gratitude, their perspective on what matters most, and how much it means to them to help other people. Humble, real, kind.
How do you define success?
