What is success?

I am as guilty as the next person in throwing around the term successful.  Often people use that term without even realizing what it means.  Webster's defines success as:

the fact of getting or achieving wealth, respect, or fame.

But there are also other meanings for success:

the correct or desired result of an attempt.

What I perceive as a successful person, may not be what someone else perceives.  I have my goals that I want to achieve, and I will not consider myself a success until I have reached them.  But to someone else, they may view me as being successful.  The gauge each person uses for defining success can be very different.

For some people, just the act of selling something for a profit is success to them.  Others may see themselves as being a successful seller if they can pay off bills with the extra money they make from selling on ebay.  And still others may see success as making $10,000 a month on ebay.  It's all in the perspective of each person.  We as a society have bastardized the term into being something that it should not be.  I think people view themselves as a failure if they are not measuring up to someone else's standard.

Over the course of my life I have seen people who, from all outward appearances, are highly successful people.  But if one were to look under the hood so to speak, they would find a person so deep in debt they would have to be dead and buried to be relieved of it.  I have also seen others who look like they are almost destitute, yet have millions in the bank.  We get caught up in the material, flashy object syndrome and never really take a self assessment.

When it comes to selling on ebay I see people who put themselves out there as being successful, yet sell 1/4 of what I do.  That does not mean they are unsuccessful.  To them, being able to sell the items they have for a profit is enough for them.  It may not be enough for me personally, but that does not mean I am any more successful than they are.  It just means we have differing values we have assigned to success.  I think a lot of us tend to aspire to reach the level of other sellers we see who have high sales records.  But not everyone is in this game for that purpose.

The bottom line is to not get caught up in the whole semantics of success, but to have our own goals and definitions for success that we strive for.  Reach your own goals.  For me, being successful means providing for my family, and not having to rely on debt to survive.  Your mileage may vary.