Success and Achievement
The meanings of success and achievement are different. For example, it is possible to be very successful without achievement. Most of my achievements come through failures which seems counter logical.
It is even possible that one's greatest failures lead to one's greatest achievements. These one may regard as successes, but it seems more satisfying to think of them as achievements.
The notion of achievement carries with it a struggle against some sort of challenge to one's being successful. If success comes too easily it is downgraded. Why! The reason is that achievement tells you something about the passage to success. And, easy passage may be a success, but it is not so much of an achievement.
Making one's way from A to B blindfolded is more of an achievement than with vision. Doing a blog on the iPhone us more of an achievement than sitting at a large mobile or desk top computer.
An achievement may not be regarded as a success. Because a success and an achievement appear to be the same they may not be regarded as different. After all getting from A to B means that one is still at B no matter how one got there.
Many people view success as the object of it all failing to recognize that achievement on the road to success is also to be valued. Why?
The reason seems to me to arise because of the mistakes one makes getting to a goal. The more mistakes one makes and overcomes may have a value greater than reaching success without mistakes. Of one is very lucky one may make very few mistakes for a time and even for a long time. Nevertheless, the person who has made a lot of mistakes and learned from them is a very different person from the one who made few mistakes and had a relatively easy time becoming succesful.
There may be a price to be paid because of easy successes. A portfolio manager may be very successful and yet not have achieved much because the stock market was bullish most of the time. Boasting of success put of an easy market is, however, foolhardy. Another manager in a bear market may have had less success, but indeed be better prepared because of the smaller achievements sting from cutting one's teeth in periods of hardship. The two managers are very different in their capacities and though one may be regarded as more successful, that person may not be able to manage a more difficult market. This is only one of many examples one can think of.
The problem with today's world is that it fails to see the difference between achievement and success. This is extremely important when evaluating the performance of people or larger units such as economies or firms. An economy such as that of India achieved much to get it's agriculture where it us today. Industrial economies may be more successful in producing crops on large scale and bringing prices down, but have they achieved as much. They can destroy the agricultural sector of India without achieving anything that has lasting value. This is because it is much easier to be successful with economies if scale in agriculture even though it is a minor achievement, easy peasy.
We are in danger of misinterpreting successes as achievements and so miss the point of it all. It is far more important to promote achievement in the grand scheme of things. Having a thriving agricultural sector in India is far more important in it's achievement than the short term success of other countries being able to easily out price Indian agriculture and produce more misery and unemployment in that country while a few firms with machinery in Canada producing wheat make bigger profits.
Say no to free trade. It is not a success story for humanity.
