Pursuing Success Is Not Enough

W. Somerset Maugham. He wrote, as I recall: "When I was 18, I desperately wanted to be rich, successful and famous. Now I am all three, but I am not sure I am any happier."
I remember what Noel Coward once said to me regarding fame: "It's a very fragile thing, old boy. Rather like carrying a Ming vase in a storm of wind. It can be snatched out of your hand any moment. Then you miss it."
As for success, here's what Lord Beaverbrook, the greatest media magnate of his day, had to say on the subject: "Aw, Mr. Johnson, success is much less important than health. You can be the richest man in the world, and the most successful man alive, but if you lose your good health you will be a very unhappy man."

Guidelines
The question to be asked, then, is this: How can the quest for wealth, fame and success be combined with the pursuit of happiness? I'm not sure there's a foolproof answer. But there are some useful guides. Here are four of the most important.
--Try to combine the pursuit of wealth with creativity. Clever manipulation of bits of paper and values may make you a billionaire, but creating a successful business, expressed in solid objects (factories, offices, docks and facilities, things of bricks and mortar and concrete) or in real estate (in lands and plantations) is more conducive to happiness. To make something--something real, visible, fruitful and productive--where once there was nothing is a fine expression of one of the deepest and healthiest human instincts.
--A successful man is likely to find happiness in producing something useful or delightful or beautiful.
What a triumph to have produced those!
--Create happiness and satisfaction by creating jobs. And not just paid occupations--all governments do that, often by the million--but genuine jobs that justify themselves, have a real purpose and longevity. The great 12th-century Jewish sage Maimonides wrote that charity is a blessing, and we must all exercise it if we can. But the finest form of charity is to enable a poor man to support himself with honor and usefulness.
A businessman who can create useful, well-paid and secure jobs is doubly blessed, by the individual he makes self-supporting and by the society he renders more secure. He helps himself, too, for, as Maimonides says, there is joy in lifting people out of want, not by alms but on a permanent basis.
--Job creation leads me to the fourth source of happiness that the right kind of success brings. It should have a moral basis. If possible, it should be consistent with the needs of our fellow men and women in the broadest sense, not just their material needs but their emotional and spiritual needs.