Freedom

American Heritage Dictionary defines success as

“ The Achievement of something 

desired, planned, or attempted”

Ayn Rand :

 Before you die, how many things did you do the way you wanted  to do ? how many you wanted to do ,Of  which how many could you attempt successfully ( it is a blessed death to die while attempting for all that you wanted ) & how many times you have won ?

http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/benevolent_universe_premise.html  ↓↓↓

Pain, suffering, failure do not have metaphysical significance—they do not reveal the nature of reality. Ayn Rand’s heroes, accordingly, refuse to take pain seriously, i.e., metaphysically. You remember when Dagny asks Ragnar in the valley how his wife can live through the months he is away at sea, and he answers (I quote just part of this passage):

“We do not think that tragedy is our natural state. We do not live in chronic dread of disaster. We do not expect disaster until we have specific reason to expect it, and when we encounter it, we are free to fight it. It is not happiness, but suffering, that we consider unnatural. It is not success but calamity that we regard as the abnormal exception in human life.”( → applies most when you don't self create problems )

Waves are inspiring, not because they rise and fall. But because they never fail to rise again

" Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. It is up to you to give [life] a meaning.” 

The Man, who says and feels that I Exist & I have freedom of choices, decisions, works, has existence. The man who does not have such feelings doesn't have existence -Jean-Paul Sartre

A personal metric: how much of the day is spent doing things out of obligation rather than out of interest?

Self-efficacy

Bandura (1997) defines self-efficacy as people’s beliefs in their capabilities to produce
desired effects by their own actions. Maddux (2002) describes self-efficacy as “what I

believe I can do with my skills under certain conditions

 Mundaka Upanishad :

The knower of self-crosses sorrow The knower of Brahma

becomes Brahman himself (brahmavid brahmaiva bhavati)