A conversation with a friend this week made me think about success and why so many people hunt for it. It is common to see Success as an ultimate goal of many endeavors and hard work over a period of time or just as a sudden achievement that confirms the value of a person through the visibility in a certain community or business or field, the earnings or income it generates or the impact/influence that person has over other people or industry…

What is rather less common is to see and interpret Success as a trauma survival strategy. Because in the patriarchal mindset the logic of success or successful people is based on competitive standards and measuring values. According the same mindset and system that promotes the chase towards success in its all components, from school to job environments, from sports and fashion to politics and business…it is the competition and the winner (over loser) that are praised and favor.

We should be able then to understand why for certain persons Success is so important and wanted…and why for others could have a different meaning and way of realization.

The Patriarchal system/society want us to live our life in a quest for better, for more, for hoarding and achieving at all costs. But this better, more, achieving in most of the cases has a high price and can elude people in chasing something that is just an empty promise. Many people when they find this Success or retain themselves as successful in a certain area they fail to feel happy or content and fulfilled and more they crave what they think as Success more effort and investment will be required.

A trauma survival strategy is a way to cope with what feels empty, unworthy, disconnected from our true Self and Identity, lacking structure and purpose for itself. It is one part of a split of many fragments created by an event or sequence of events, disrupting our normal functioning as human beings. People develop a survival strategy to be able to cope with something uncomfortable and often not easy to understand, feel, digest, accept…then the Success God becomes something to pursue in the hope that the void can be filled, the missing self-worth and self-trust can be restored, the gratification can replace the unhappiness and misery. It might seem a contradiction in terms, but more this God is embellished and worshiped, more the strategy will separate the individual from its own Truth and needs with the illusion that all that matters is to be Successful and recognized as such by the others.

This reflection brings me to the question: why do I see so many disconnected (to be read as traumatized) people being Successful and really visible and acclaimed by others, by many followers or consumers of our society?

And the answer comes back with another reflection: is the Patriarchal system based on competition and comparison the source or fuel of this survival mechanism or is just a product of a traumatized society?

The facts show that self-awareness and valuable connection with the healthy Identity do not need really to involve a Success notion (or at least the one based on competition)…unless one retains itself to be successful in its own healing path by developing a self-esteem and thought autonomy that makes it immune to this notion of comparison and competitiveness. When we wish and achieve a Healthy Self with healthy boundaries we only compare ourselves with the past versions of ourselves, less healed and whole. There is no reason to think in Success terms as an outwardly reality or goal…it becomes part of our own process of self-development and healing. And it is enough at any stage we are, the less or more do not count. What matters is to know that every self-encounter brings us closer to the real One, not to a created and proclaimed image of a false God.

I wish to ask you today: how successful you are in your own journey through Life? And how do you measure your Success today, independently of how much you achieved, gained or hoarded along it…?