I think subconsciously, there is always the pressure to succeed. But this definition of success goes through morphs and distortions, never truly remaining the same. Yet, the desire to be seen as “successful” — or at least what you deem is so — is always there.
Some background information about me: I’ve always been lucky enough to attend prestigious schools my whole life. From Middle school to High school, my grades have been decent enough for me to enter the top schools in my country. In that period of time, the definition of success to me was very insular: to achieve stellar grades. And conditioned to achieve that since young, that was my whole life goal. If you asked me in middle or high school what my ultimate goal was, it would be to attend Oxford or Cambridge. I set my eyes on those 2 schools even as young as 15 years old (how insane was that?), and all life purpose ceased beyond that goal.
Of course, I had to have a second goal in life as a performative gesture to not seem like a superficial nerd. And guess what that goal was? It was to travel the world. Not to demean this goal in any way because I absolutely think it is an amazing goal to have and it is still one of my key goals now, but it was the mentality behind having that goal. To me, that was the conventional definition of success after academic success. And for me, I think I was just afraid of going against the norm. To be honest, I can’t tell if it was out of fear of being out of the norm and being unaccepted, or it was out of wanting to be admired for being everyone’s poster kid.
And then life threw me a curveball: I ended up at a university I applied to just to fill up the application spots. I think this was the biggest fulfilment in my life, not because of the cliche “life is what you make it to be,” but because it truly helped me see life out of the insulated worldview that I have enclosed myself in.
Besides the cliche struggles like adapting to a new country and learning to interact with people from different cultures (of which I experienced it all), I think what struck me most was the complete perspective change I had. The school culture here is so different in the sense that there is really so much less pressure on academics, and I genuinely have so much free time compared to when I’m back home. And then that struck me: What should I be doing in this free time? This free time seemed like god’s sudden gift to me, and all of a sudden I felt so lost. And then I felt like I was exposed to so many things out of the parochial bubble I had trapped myself in since middle school: everyone was doing so much more with their lives outside of studies. And that struck me: Maybe I was nothing outside of my academic achievements. People were busy accumulating skills in other aspects whereas all I knew how to do was study. And that drove me to a whole life spiral: Had I placed my life purpose wrongly?
And then I started searching for new hobbies. But part of me was looking for hobbies that could be relevant to today’s world. Hobbies like crocheting and reading rom-coms — useless! But hobbies like video editing and coding were what I looked into. But then I realised: I was solely looking for a hobby for the sake of having a hobby/having skills outside of academics. I was unable to truly find something I enjoyed without placing some sort of material benefit onto it. My definition of success had shifted, but I was still seeking the same sort of validation.
So how do we get out of this swallow of chasing this arbitrary concept of success? We need to take a step back and learn how to live life without constantly chasing a goal. Of course, living life completely without purpose is meaningless in itself. But doing everything with the motive of being seen as successful should not be the way to go. And the only way of dissociating from this rat race is to take a backseat and pull yourself out every once in a while. Maybe success is not the value others place on you; but rather the value you place on yourself. Do things that you truly enjoy and everything will fall into place. Trust the process.