Success can be a challenge. That is, if the individual - or nation, that achieves it is simply one rung up a towering ladder. The way to handle success is to never become complacent. Yoseph reveals some fresh insight into the true measure of success.

Handling success - lessons from Harvard

Here at Harvard, it isn't really hard to find people who have been successful. Actually, the stereotypical view of Harvard students is that one must have been super successful go get into such an institution. If I want to look for success, I don't even have to leave my room to find it, the people I live with have experienced tremendous success in their lives: one of them won a world rowing championship, another got the highest Grade Point Average in his region, another one has a good chance of swimming at the 2008 Olympics representing El Salvador, and the list goes on. What I want to talk about today though is not about how successful Harvard students are, but what makes them become that successful and maintain their success. In my view, success isn't the actual event at a particular time when one enjoys some sort of triumph and achievement, but success is conditioned by your reaction to that event.
In life there are times when we experience success and failure, and we react differently to both events. Usually, I have seen people who failed in something complaining and moaning out of sadness, while people who just succeeded celebrating. These are quite natural reactions that come uninvited. We consider extreme events such as success and failure as defining moments in our lives. I felt successful when I got my admission to Harvard, and my friends felt the same thing when they won their competitions and pushed their limits. However, many times we tend to see only the immediate effect, how much we have gained from that success, and not the long-term effect of that successful event. To me, success isn't defined by that moment and even though it seems like success, it is not. The success lies in how we react to it.
Success is a very satisfying experience. We automatically become happy, and start celebrating. It is when all the hard work yields fruits. Success is followed by a big sigh. "Well done! Congratulations!" When you succeed in something, you become happy, and people around you become happy for you. One question I try to ask myself when I have a moment of success is, 'so what am I going to do about it? So what?' It sounds like a very inappropriate question, right? How can you say, 'so what,' when one is celebrating for an achievement? What is happening is happiness, right?
Even though success is satisfying, it is also a big sign of danger. Here is the thought behind it. Life is like a ladder. At the bottom is when you are born, and you start moving up from one step to the next. When you started going to primary school, that was a step, and when achieving you success then you go up another step. A good step up, a success story, is so sweet that it tempts you to just stay on that step, to reap without effort. Some people get stuck on one step, and rather than going up another step, they remain on that one step, stagnant. We get tempted to dwell on our success, and that is the biggest danger of it.
The way you handle a success is what actually makes it a success story. If it leads you into your doom, then it becomes your failure story, and not one of success. That is the way many Harvard students see success, as a one-day event, and the next day there is a new target, a new level to reach. The past success becomes the norm and they get extremely upset and hurt when they go below that standard.
A success becomes a success when handled right. When many Harvard students succeed in something, they celebrate and then leave it behind. They don't dwell on past success, rather they thrive to do more, bigger things, have a bigger impact in their communities and the world. In my opinion, such determination and push is what makes Harvard students very unique, and when they graduate they go to do great things for themselves and the world. They let their success become history, and start working on the next success. There is a lot we, as Ethiopians, need to learn from them. If we don't make today's success our norm, then we will keep on talking about how good we were once. If not, when people ask, "How good are you now?" Then we will not have an answer because it would probably be worse than where you were before.

Yoseph can be contacted at askyoseph@gmail.com