P is for peace. While I do hope for world peace, here I am talking about inner peace. It is the most important thing in my life and the yardstick that I measure my life success.
When I was young, like any other ambitious and passionate person, I went after the societal defined success of money, power and position. As I continued to achieve it, I was paying a cost and I was not feeling the contentment that should come with it. I did not pay much attention at the time, I was young and was able to push myself and I did not have any responsibilities to distract me.
As I grew older, it was not fun. I started reassessing my life and charted what I considered the most important elements and the cost I was willing to pay. That helped me define how I wanted to lead my life and while money, societal framework holds a place, that is not what I measure my life success with.
Peace is the most important element if my life and I am not willing to trade it for anything. As long as I can sleep straight at night, I believe I have attained success. I have gone at great lengths and altered my life to reach a point where it is the yardstick that I use for anything I am doing – will this disturb my peace? This includes job, relationships everything.
It is heartening to see that the younger generation is already using their personal yardsticks to define success much earlier in life. I have young friends and family where I see this in practice. It gives me a lot of hope for the future.