I want to define success by redefining it. For me it isn't that solely mythical definition - glamour, allure, power of wealth, and the privilege from care. Any definition of success should be personal because it's so transitory. It's about shaping my own destiny.
Interpretation
Success is a personal journey that should be defined individually rather than by societal standards.
In this quote, Anita Roddick emphasizes that success is not a one-size-fits-all concept dictated by wealth, power, or glamour. Instead, she advocates for a personal and adaptable definition of success that reflects one's own values and aspirations, acknowledging that these definitions can change over time as individuals shape their own destinies.
In practice
During a motivational speech about personal growth and success.
I am still looking for the modern equivalent of those Quakers who ran successful businesses and made money because they offered honest products and treated their people decently . . . This business creed, sadly, seems long forgotten.
I started The Body Shop in 1976 simply to create a livelihood for myself and my two daughters, while my husband, Gordon, was trekking across the Americas. I had no training or experience and my only business acumen was Gordon's advice to take sales of £300 a week. Nobody talks of entrepreneurship as survival, but that's exactly what it is and what nurtures creative thinking.
If you think you're too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito.
But if you can create an honorable livelihood, where you take your skills and use them and you earn a living from it, it gives you a sense of freedom and allows you to balance your life the way you want.
Quite apart from anything else, my experience is trying to change things for the better makes you feel better, healthier. Humans are communicative animals: when you do good in a community, the benefits eventually get back to you.
First, you have to have fun. Second, you have to put love where your labour is. Third, you have to go in the opposite direction to everyone else.
There is a time in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.
I was never coached; I was never told how to hold a bat.
Whatever help we may want from the international community now or in the future, we want to make sure that this help is tailored to help our people to help themselves.
There may be people who have more talent than you, but there's no excuse for anyone to work harder than you do - and I believe that.
When people ask me, ‘how do you make it in show business,’ or whatever, what I always tell them — and nobody ever takes note of it ‘cuz it’s not the answer they wanted to hear…but I always say, ‘Be so good they can’t ignore you.’
Try first to be a man of value; success will follow.
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