Everything you do is a success. I can hear you scoffing but it is true, everything you do is a success. Everything I have done has been a success. When I was twenty-one, I was successfully fired from a banking job. At twenty-seven, I successfully ended a marriage. And years later, I successfully walked out of a job in the middle of the day.
Why are these successes? Because they worked; I got myself fired perfectly. The divorce was successful. And the walking out went quite well, thank you. Ah, but did these events feel good at the time? Oh, heavens no. All of them were painful and ugly. But I cannot say I failed at doing any of them. I did them extraordinarily well.
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Why are these successes? Because they worked; I got myself fired perfectly. The divorce was successful. And the walking out went quite well, thank you. Ah, but did these events feel good at the time? Oh, heavens no. All of them were painful and ugly. But I cannot say I failed at doing any of them. I did them extraordinarily well.
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We equate success with things that go our way and failure with things that don’t go the way we wanted or expected them to. I‘ve always thought that the term ‘failed experiment’ to mean that the experiment didn’t result in the answer that the experimenter wanted. It’s not that the experiment failed; it just said “no” instead of “yes”. That is not failure, that is information.
Face it, part of the time most of us have no idea what we are doing with our lives. What we need is information and the only way to get the information is to do out and try something. We can listen to advice and we can read and learn but, ultimately, we what we need is direct experience. And there is no guarantee that an experience, or experiment, will go the way you want it to go.
In fact, it’s when things go awry that we do some of our best learning. The trick is to learn to see this awry-ness as a learning moment not a fear-instilling moment. This is a stop toward understandiing the difference between success and failure. If you did the experiment and it turned out differently than you expected, did you fail, or were you successful in getting information that you can use to further your cause?
Yes, people go through some horrific experiences, and I do not mean to minimize those events. Yet, many who survive horrific events are the first to come forward and say what they have learned and even find the blessings that came along with the horror.
None of this is to be taken lightly. There have been many extremely painful events in my own life, and moving through and past them was difficult. But here I am and I can say, now, that all those events were successes in my life. I didn’t like them, and I certainly would not ask for them, but I am who I am because of my experiences; I would not trade them for anything.
The world measures success by quantity and (sometimes) quality, but this is completely external and not relevant to your heart or to your soul. The more you learn, the more you know, the more successful you will feel. Each event, experience, encounter is an experiment and all experiments are successful; they simply say yes or no. (OK, sometimes you get a “maybe”.)
I challenge you to experiment this week. For the next seven days, remove the word failure from your vocabulary and declare everything a success. Your child can successfully write on the wall in crayon, you can successfully burn the muffins, you can successfully run that meeting with the guy who always interrupts - name everything you do a success, even it is simply brushing your teeth.. Give yourself one week to be successful at everything and see how you feel at the end. I'd be interested to hear how that works for you.
May your week be filled with recognizable blessings!
Face it, part of the time most of us have no idea what we are doing with our lives. What we need is information and the only way to get the information is to do out and try something. We can listen to advice and we can read and learn but, ultimately, we what we need is direct experience. And there is no guarantee that an experience, or experiment, will go the way you want it to go.
In fact, it’s when things go awry that we do some of our best learning. The trick is to learn to see this awry-ness as a learning moment not a fear-instilling moment. This is a stop toward understandiing the difference between success and failure. If you did the experiment and it turned out differently than you expected, did you fail, or were you successful in getting information that you can use to further your cause?
Yes, people go through some horrific experiences, and I do not mean to minimize those events. Yet, many who survive horrific events are the first to come forward and say what they have learned and even find the blessings that came along with the horror.
None of this is to be taken lightly. There have been many extremely painful events in my own life, and moving through and past them was difficult. But here I am and I can say, now, that all those events were successes in my life. I didn’t like them, and I certainly would not ask for them, but I am who I am because of my experiences; I would not trade them for anything.
The world measures success by quantity and (sometimes) quality, but this is completely external and not relevant to your heart or to your soul. The more you learn, the more you know, the more successful you will feel. Each event, experience, encounter is an experiment and all experiments are successful; they simply say yes or no. (OK, sometimes you get a “maybe”.)
I challenge you to experiment this week. For the next seven days, remove the word failure from your vocabulary and declare everything a success. Your child can successfully write on the wall in crayon, you can successfully burn the muffins, you can successfully run that meeting with the guy who always interrupts - name everything you do a success, even it is simply brushing your teeth.. Give yourself one week to be successful at everything and see how you feel at the end. I'd be interested to hear how that works for you.
May your week be filled with recognizable blessings!