The Tibetan Book of the Dead speaks of a sense of success as an ego-bound state of thoughts, speech and actions.  We undergo such a process of inner judgment while living and also dying.  Death is apparently a phase where we will have an opportunity to peer into an 'all-seeing mirror' which will reveal the consequences of all our actions. Each of us will weigh our past actions in a life-review. It is possible we will frame success differently in this existence and in others.  How we come to recognize our underlying nature, our impulses, and tendencies will supposedly enable us to come face-to-face with our individual identity. Whether or not you realize what you set out to achieve in your life will be one way you redefine success in the past, present and future.