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Your successes and what contributed to it?

sayak83

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
I thought I would start a thread where one can share personal stories of success and acheivements and what contributed towards it. Events can vary from getting successfully married to your sweetheart (yay!), to professional or sporting success or success in some personal project or passion (learning something well etc.)

What I want to think is what has contributed to these individual success stories in various aspects of lives of different people...how important relative to one another is the interplay of innate talents, effort and perseverence, spiritual guidance and convictions, support from family and friends, and also luck. If you gained your success through unscrupulous stab-in-the-back ways...share that too :) .

Hopefully over time we can get a realistic picture on what factors make a person more able to achieve their hopes, dreams and satisfaction in life compared to another.

I am reflecting on this recently. As a new teacher in college, I feel I have a duty to the students to not only teach them the subjects well, but also important life and attitude skills that will help them be more successful going forward in whatever their interests in private or professional life lie. Its not something I have reflected on before...I have just furrowed my own plough till now...with reasonable success :p.

All comments and reflections welcome.
 

metis

aged ecumenical anthropologist
Let me just say that the successes I've had were almost always mainly from people who showed me the way. And let me just recommend that being a good educator must involve being a good student first, and being a good student is a lifelong process.

BTW, congrats on being a teacher, and always remember that you're there for the students first and foremost.
 

sayak83

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
Let me just say that the successes I've had were almost always mainly from people who showed me the way. And let me just recommend that being a good educator must involve being a good student first, and being a good student is a lifelong process.

BTW, congrats on being a teacher, and always remember that you're there for the students first and foremost.
Always wanted to be one. So being one now certainly counts as a success. Now to understand what made it happen is the tough part...
Share a bit about some of your high points.
 

Jumi

Well-Known Member
Taking pride in your work, in doing your job well. That helps get over quite a few obstacles, though early on might seem to cost you time and energy.
 

Nakosis

Non-Binary Physicalist
Premium Member
Reading - I used to read a lot as a kid. I think this provided me different ideas and POVs to draw from in solving problems.
 

Audie

Veteran Member
I thought I would start a thread where one can share personal stories of success and acheivements and what contributed towards it. Events can vary from getting successfully married to your sweetheart (yay!), to professional or sporting success or success in some personal project or passion (learning something well etc.)

What I want to think is what has contributed to these individual success stories in various aspects of lives of different people...how important relative to one another is the interplay of innate talents, effort and perseverence, spiritual guidance and convictions, support from family and friends, and also luck. If you gained your success through unscrupulous stab-in-the-back ways...share that too :) .

Hopefully over time we can get a realistic picture on what factors make a person more able to achieve their hopes, dreams and satisfaction in life compared to another.

I am reflecting on this recently. As a new teacher in college, I feel I have a duty to the students to not only teach them the subjects well, but also important life and attitude skills that will help them be more successful going forward in whatever their interests in private or professional life lie. Its not something I have reflected on before...I have just furrowed my own plough till now...with reasonable success :p.

All comments and reflections welcome.

My biggest boost was a tiger mom who had me
speaking two languages, and reading at Dr. Seuss
level when I was three yrs old.

I think anyone could to that in the right environment.
 

sun rise

The world is on fire
Premium Member
I'd attribute the success I had to my failures. I'd do dumb things and life would teach me that they were dumb. So in part never growing up was helpful because young kids just learning to walk etc fail all the time until they succeed. Part of my success story is therefore having a little kid alive inside me and listening to his advice at least a little bit

A couple of examples:

I can't remember how many times I failed to stop smoking over many many years. I knew it was bad for me but that was not enough. Let's say I failed 1000 times although the true number might be more or less. One day it was like my whole being strongly realized "I WANT TO LIVE" and that time I succeeded and I've been tobacco free ever since.

The little kid is also very helpful in the computer world I worked in and volunteer in since I've retired. I "play" with computers and software and the fear of breaking things is not very strong in me. So when solving problems I'll try various things sort of like a young kid putting square blocks in round holes, finding that does not work and trying again until I happen to pick up the round block.
 
Let me just say that the successes I've had were almost always mainly from people who showed me the way. And let me just recommend that being a good educator must involve being a good student first, and being a good student is a lifelong process.

BTW, congrats on being a teacher, and always remember that you're there for the students first and foremost.
I like that approach :)
 

Twilight Hue

Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
I thought I would start a thread where one can share personal stories of success and acheivements and what contributed towards it. Events can vary from getting successfully married to your sweetheart (yay!), to professional or sporting success or success in some personal project or passion (learning something well etc.)

What I want to think is what has contributed to these individual success stories in various aspects of lives of different people...how important relative to one another is the interplay of innate talents, effort and perseverence, spiritual guidance and convictions, support from family and friends, and also luck. If you gained your success through unscrupulous stab-in-the-back ways...share that too :) .

Hopefully over time we can get a realistic picture on what factors make a person more able to achieve their hopes, dreams and satisfaction in life compared to another.

I am reflecting on this recently. As a new teacher in college, I feel I have a duty to the students to not only teach them the subjects well, but also important life and attitude skills that will help them be more successful going forward in whatever their interests in private or professional life lie. Its not something I have reflected on before...I have just furrowed my own plough till now...with reasonable success :p.

All comments and reflections welcome.
My own life victory would be the holistic ability to let go of things and to cope with things I cannot let go of, notably better then I used to.

Stuff in general doesn't bother me as much as it used to, whenever things don't go my way, or I lose something I value. The art of not clinging.

It took Zen training, especially Zazen techniques to help develop that of which carries on well past the cushion that integrates into daily life.

It has brought about so much relief so far.
 

joe1776

Well-Known Member
"Success" is the achievement of a goal. In my opinion, the goal of our lives has been determined by our brains using the reward and punishment method. Our brains punish us with the pain of guilt when we act immorally and reward us with pleasure when we treat others with kindness -- we feel good about it.

So, our lives ought to be about making moral progress -- becoming better human beings -- and our success can be measured by our level of contentment. If we are making good moral progress, we should feel greater peace of mind.

I've done OK. But I'm still alive so I'm not finished yet.
 
Last edited:

metis

aged ecumenical anthropologist
Always wanted to be one. So being one now certainly counts as a success. Now to understand what made it happen is the tough part...
Share a bit about some of your high points.
When it came to teaching, it was when students came back and told me I made a difference in their lives that's the most memorable. So, what I learned from others was passed on to my students and I loved my job in education so much that if I had to live my life all over again I would have gone into the same field. Now I'm old-- er, mature-- enough so as to visit my grandchildren at their universities (I have four now attending), and I still love the campus life.
 

sayak83

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
When it came to teaching, it was when students came back and told me I made a difference in their lives that's the most memorable. So, what I learned from others was passed on to my students and I loved my job in education so much that if I had to live my life all over again I would have gone into the same field. Now I'm old-- er, mature-- enough so as to visit my grandchildren at their universities (I have four now attending), and I still love the campus life.
That's great to hear! :)
 

sayak83

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
My biggest boost was a tiger mom who had me
speaking two languages, and reading at Dr. Seuss
level when I was three yrs old.

I think anyone could to that in the right environment.
Wow.
I don't remember my three year old self at all!
 

Audie

Veteran Member
Wow.
I don't remember my three year old self at all!

Oh, that is too bad. I have some very nice memories.

I was doing two languages from before I was born,
so specific memories of bilingual from those days are few.
 

Quagmire

Imaginary talking monkey
Staff member
Premium Member
I owe my success to the fact that over the years I have radically lowered my standards.
 

Vinayaka

devotee
Premium Member
All the successful people I know have will. Odd thing about will ... the more you use, the more you get. Not like money, more you use, it dwindles.
 

Jumi

Well-Known Member
Wow.
I don't remember my three year old self at all!
I was told that when your personality starts forming after some level of language acquisition you also develop different type of memory imprints that resemble an adults, instead of the more emotional-tactile etc kind of memories. Your "body" remembers the sensations from back then, so it's more of a you don't consciously remember things from being three years old. Well, at least that explanation made sense to me.
 
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