See what other Tripod members have said about gratification -- then tell us what you think.

And see how members responded to the last survey about Abusive E-Mail.

For past survey results, check our survey archive.

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This week: Personal Success and Gratification

There are many theories as to what exactly makes a person successful -- money, power, influence, property, emotional satisfaction, spititual wealth -- the list goes on and on. How do you measure personal success?

Work & Money survey questions change each Wednesday.

binki: The degree to which I am happy to get up and face what ever the day may bring.

Lorissa: For me personal success is having a job that I enjoy. Yes money is important, but not if you are unhappy at the job that you have. I worked in industry for several years and made lots of money, but I was not happy. I decided to go back to my first love, teaching. I love my job now. The pay is not as much as it was before, but I enjoy it. I look forward to going to work. SO, for me personal satisfaction is better than having the wealth.

buch1: Success is definitely an issue of personal choice. But for me, when I look at my situation and am content with my decisions, then I consider myself successful.

cyberdog: Success is scraping together the mortgage, taking care of the kid, keeping the dog team fed and exercised, knocking out a few new pages on the book daily, and, of course, making your mark at the office. Nothing to it.
Brian O'Donoghue, Fairbanks, Alaska

formicacid: I am broke, and that sucks. then I remember why I'm broke. Instead of getting another job (which would keep me fed) I help people, like this girl next to me whose homepage I'm helping create. That's gratification; my belly may grumble, but my friends are genuinely smiling.

AlMiller: Too much emphasis is placed on what you do and how much you make. The true bottom line is: Are you happy? Do you feel good about yourself? Measures of success are multi-faceted. When I wake up and see Lake Tahoe out my window, breathe fresh air, have drinkable tap water, and can go skiing or hiking or do anything else almost everyday, I feel successful. In fact I feel sorry for the "successful" person who must rise at 5 a.m.; put on an uncomfortable three-piece suit; swill down Maalox; commute three hours per day through agonizing rush-hour traffic; and spend 40 hours per week under fluorescent lights. On the other hand, I envy the person who is happily married and surrounded by good friends, because success in my love life and relationships is something I have yet to achieve. No doubt success is in the eye of the beholder, but happiness and serenity are good common denominators.

MalcolmH: Success is the eager feeling I have about going to work in the morning. It's the satisfaction of knowing that I've done my job well at the end of the day. It's the shout of "DADDY" my son cries before he crashes into me for a bear hug when I get home. It's the loving kiss my wife gives me at night. As long as I can keep these things about me and around me, no matter what station in life I've come to, I will count myself successful.

EduardoSVR: This depends on each person's goals and views of life. As for me, success has to do with:

• Enjoying what you do. If you don't, it must be TORTURE to get up every day and rememeber what you're about to face.
• Constant progress. This is very important. You should never get stuck. Re-teach yourself, read, take courses, etc, so you're prepared for whatever may come.
• Feeling useful. This has to do with spiritual wealth and all that stuff.
• Gaining a nice core of friends at work. I mean, the best treasure of a person is his/her real friends.

Money? It's a tool, not a goal. It does good to make a lot, basically to ensure your future, giving a great standard of living to your family and be able to progress at work.

LukasBradley: Whenever I am asked this question, I always offer pretty much the same answer. Money. Saying anything else would be lying.

Inch: "Whenever I am asked this question, I always offer pretty much the same answer. Money. Saying anything else would be lying."

... and then one year I woke up

• to a job I hated going to every morning.
• to a failing marriage.
• to kids that couldn't talk to their dad.
• to "business associates", not friends.
• to depression.

Wow! What a huge success I had become!

I found real success then, in a job I enjoyed going to, rediscovering emotion, and building personal relationships.

Colestock: Dr. Stephen Covey suggests that all humans have four principles that exert themselves on us. He says we all need to LOVE (social), to LEARN (mental), to LIVE (physical), and to LEAVE A LEGACY (spiritual). If we fulfill needs in each of these spheres, we are supposedly happy. I am practicing his techniques for attending to these pieces of myself and I find I am now very much happier and I measure my success weekly as I evaluate how closely I attended to these needs each week.

GrrrrlX: I think I'll be succesful when I have fulfilled my goals: getting a job that I love, living in a place that makes me happy to look at it, and having wonderful friends and a person next to me that I love. I've fulfilled at least the friends part, and the love part I'm working on ;-) .

khurt: Success is the progressive realisation of a worthwhile dream or goal.

noylj: Success is the achievement of a goal. Thus Personal Success is the achievement of a personal goal. Success is relative to your goal. If your goal is to have a net worth of $9M and you only achieve $12k, you are not a success AT THAT GOAL (though you most certainly have other personal successes).

Lighthouse: I believe personal success comes when you are able to be who you really are, not who you think other people want you to be, or who you wish you could be -- but the best of the person that you really are. And that you like that person.

Kimmy: Personal success to me is feeling good about what I'm doing with my time and energy on a regular basis. It's knowing that I'm making the world a more beautiful place in some small way every chance I get, whether through doing human rights work or smiling at my bus driver on my way home. It's knowing that my mom is proud of me and that my brother looks up to me. It's knowing that the people I love are happy and healthy and know they can count on me. It's learning something new constantly, it's being adventurous and at peace at the same moment. Personal success is very very different from professional success. I have professional goals too, but they are inconsequential compared to my personal needs. Professional success is just meeting those goals which I've set, and continuing to set new ones. It's not important if I'm professionally successful. I just want to be glad to be alive every minute that I am.

TimMoore3: Success is rather subjective, but here goes. I consider myself successful every day if I can go home satisfied that what I have done has made a difference. Being a positive influence on others is very gratifying. Also, I recently started teaching at night and that has brought me some of the most satisfying times that I can remember. I think that as we grow older, we begin to realize the importance of others instead of ourselves. This realization is at the heart of any satisfaction.

tudobem: I laugh a lot at my job. I consider it a good job because I work with good people. I also laugh when I get my paycheck. I don't think it's such a bad trade-off.

olo999: There can only be one reason to be alive: to try to mean something to others -- the old do-gooder cliche about helping people. I know I am successful when I have done something this day that helped, in however small a way, someone else; to be able to believe that I left this person a tiny bit better off than I found them. Of course money is an extremely helpful tool in accomplishing this kind of success! But it isn't essential :)

mattbee: Happiness: I think this is the only way. If you're happy at what you're doing, in the situation you're in, you are a successful person.

imagines: Success always seems to equate to happiness.

tmcmahon: How do I define success? Success is a term relative to the area of influence in your life. For me, I am a success due to these simple facts:

• I have a wife who loves me
• Family to enjoy.
• A job I love to go to (except for the ties)

I may not be the richest person as far as material wealth is concerned, but I don't care. More money tends to equal more things. And more things tend to equal more debt. If we are to equate 'success' by our debts, then there are too many successes in the world. Live a life with out debt and with all you NEED -- and your life will have been a success.

jbeidler: More important than money to me is doing work you enjoy, having the freedom to travel, and knowing that you are truly changing the world for the better, even in a small way.

agger: Money. There I said it. Money is the true measure of personal success. It allows one to control time, and time is the ultimate luxury. Think back to the root of most of your problems in life and I bet money would play a substantial factor in either the cause or the solution. Whenever I hear people parrot the the disgusting platitude, "I don't care if I have money, I just want to be happy," I bristle at their incorrect assumption that money and happiness are mutually exclusive. Guess what, they are the same thing.

mabourn: Success is being the best you can every day and doing what you can to make your world a better place.

JackM: Happiness.

LowKeyCat: Success is definitely measured by one's ability to do what one wants to do, when one wants to do it, while having others appreciate what one is doing.