Success vs. Significance

“The success-motivated person tends to measure his or her life in terms of money, power, status, achievement, and recognition. The significant person places emphasis on a more spiritual view of life—generosity, empowerment of others, service, building up others, and helping them develop solid relationships.

“Let’s take a closer look at the words I’ve written here. On the left side, you see the traits of a successful person—or at least what our society has told us are the measurements of success. On the right side you see the traits of the significant person.

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“The successful person has learned how to make money, but the significant person has learned how to give it away—how to be generous, to share the blessings of money with those who are in need or those who help meet a variety of social and humanitarian needs.

“The successful person has achieved great things—sadly sometimes at the expense of others. He or she is proud of what has already been accomplished. The significant person understands that the greatest thing anyone can accomplish is to serve others and to help them achieve their goals.

“Finally, successful people have attained a measure of status. Others look up to them and maybe even see them as role models. We often discover later that those who have become our role models let us down. They turn out to be something less than we had hoped. In direct contrast, the significant person is one who values relationships. They become trusted friends and invaluable mentors, and they invest their time in others rather than in striving to build status.

“If you look at them more closely, these components of significance all have something to do with generosity. Giving of resources is one form of generosity, serving others is another, and fostering meaningful relationships is yet another. It all comes down to Time, Talent, Treasure, and Touch.”

What a privilege it is to make this leap from the superficiality of success to significance. The danger of seeing such a chart is that one might think you have to have these other kinds of success before you can move to significance. No, that’s not at all necessary.

Stop and think of the most significant people you know. They aren’t necessarily that successful in the world’s terms, are they? The people who have impacted my life the most through the years have been teachers, coaches, pastors, Sunday school teachers, family, and friends. The majority of them have had very modest economic resources, but their lives have been wealthy in terms of what they’ve shared with me.

I think of a high school basketball coach I had who helped shape my future in the spirit of generosity. In addition to teaching school and being in educational administration, Jack Swanson helped in the founding of Care Philippines. As a result of his friendship with Rose and Melo Biron, who were fellow members of his and Dick Todd’s River Forest Presbyterian Church in the Chicago area, in their retirement, he and his wife actually went to the mission field. He also helped John R.W. Stott in his ministry to educate young, third-world intellectuals to serve Jesus Christ as theologians and biblical scholars. Ironically, today, 50 years after he was my coach, he happens to be retired in Windsor Manor in Carol Stream, Ill., where my mother lives. His spirit of generosity continues on, making him a most significant person, as he provides loving care for people like my mother, well into their 90s, doing things for them that they can’t do for themselves.