The (Very Brief) History of Success in the Yun Life

To get the full extent of what success means to me at this point in my life at 20 years old, I will demonstrate what success has meant to me throughout my life:

At age 10... 

"Yes! I was the first one done to turn in my quiz! Take that, boys!!"

At age 15...

Making Honor Roll, Varsity team, Orchestra Auditions; Winning Student Elections

At age 17...

Doing well on the SATs, getting into college, determining what I want to study, getting away from my family

At age 18...

Live college with the mentality of "Work hard, Play Hard", make friends and be social, and saying 'yes' to every opportunity that comes my way, embracing the life away from my family

At age 19...

Getting involved on campus with selective development programs and different organizations and becoming a leader within those organizations, grow professionally and get an internship, maintaining family relationship with siblings and parents, get out of comfort zone

At age 20...

Knowing what I want to do with my life and following my passions no matter what; surrounding myself with good influences and people that make my life better; knowing how to live on my own and cook actual food that does not require microwaves or does not involve the word 'instant' or 'frozen' or 'pizza'; being more involved with my family members' lives (all 6 of them)

Doing a self-analysis, what I found most interesting was how until a couple months ago, after my first internship (See my first blog entry to see how that went...or not), my definition of success was based on grades, performance in sports and music, certificates of accomplishment, medals and all those tangibles of being the best. It was also about 'landing that job'. My ambitions to succeed were about getting in and being in the professional world, to make that money, if you will.

Slowly but surely, my goals and my idea of success isn't so much oriented around that professionalism. Of course, I still want to make that money (I know, I know, money doesn't buy happiness....but it helps. It helps a lot.) and I strive to do whatever it takes to excel in my career. However, after my internship, I realize there is so much more to life than that. It's also about improving myself personally, being the best person I can be, not just the best student, best intern/worker/employee/procastinator/runner/pianist/infinitenouns.

My internship made me realize that working at a company for potentially the rest of my life is a very long time, so I better make sure I'm doing what I love and what I'm doing makes me better for it.

And I may have mentioned my family once or twice.. It took me to leave the nest and away from my family (Finally!) to realize how important my family is to me and it's a darn shame it took me like only 18 years to figure that one out. Growing up and still to this day (cause I guess I'm still growing), my family has been so incredibly instrumental in my concept of what success is- which often and is conflicting with my ideas of success. My parents pressuring and nagging (that would be my mom, cause dads don't nag...they stare and sigh, which is way worse but less annoying) me to be the best in school and basically everything which as you can imagine often coincided with my plans to hang out with friends and live my youth because someone once said 'you only live once'. But I'm not complaining (at least not now), because that pressure and nagging is what got me here and typing these words for you to read.

Coming to college, being away from that nagging and sighing and staring, I wanted to distinguish the difference between what I thought my parents wanted for me and what I wanted for me to succeed. Often they're the same, different, colliding and intertwined, but I just wanted to know for myself. Of course, that lead to a series of 'discussions' (Mom: nagging; Dad: staring; Me: looking at the ceiling) with my parents questioning my motivation and priorities and What-I-Want-To-Do-With-My-Life.

And the answer to that? I want to succeed for myself, for my parents, my grandparents, all those kids in Africa, but I want to do it on my own terms with my own goals and visions, not my parents or anyone else's for that matter. And I think they are okay with that (at least for now) since they know they raised me well. Hence to go full circle, I need to know who I am and who I want to be. And something tells me that that is a perpetual, never-ending evolution. And I'm okay with that.