Success is when you can go from one failure to another without losing your enthusiasm. Someone said that in a forgettable movie I recently watched. That really spoke to me. What if personal success were less about results and more about attitude, less about achievement and more about perseverance through failure? That might render more of us successes.
Mind you, none of us want or readily admit to failures. But we all have them. And research indicates we learn more from our failures than we do from our successes. The only true failure is that from which we learn nothing. Failures are mandatory lessons in the school of hard knocks, which we have to negotiate to receive a degree in wisdom and maturity.
The Apache Indians had a test that each male had to successfully manage in order to graduate to full manhood. They had to rapidly run a mile across the bleak and burning desert with a mouthful of water without ever swallowing the water. At the end of the course they would have to spit out what they had previously held in their mouth. Those who swallowed failed, and would get to do it all over again.
Enthusiasm is like that water. Whatever you may have to endure or go through, whatever mistakes and wrong turnings you happen to make and thus have to rectify, you must never lose what matters most: the precious water of belief. You must believe in yourself and in your ultimate success in life and relationships – though success may end up meaning something far different and less dramatic than what you thought when you first began.
I have written several books more books than have been published. It is somewhat embarrassing to admit that. Yet I keep on writing. Why? Because I still have not lost my enthusiasm for writing; because I still maintain the belief that one day I will write a book that will finally connect with a large enough audience to justify all my labor. Otherwise I could not write. The playwright Arthur Miller once said in an interview that writers must believe they can change the world, or they would not keep on writing. I have not given up on that yet.
Some time back, a struggling young poet reportedly asked poet laureate Elizabeth Bishop to read and critique her work. That represented a real risk. Ms. Bishop asked her one question: “If I tell you it isn’t any good, will you keep on writing?” The woman said, “Yes, I will keep on writing regardless of what you tell me.” “Then I will read your poetry,” she answered.
Success is keeping on keeping on. Why? Because it vastly beats the alternative. If you give up it could be as if you never lived, as if you never cared, as if you never strove not only to the best of your ability, but also to the full extent, to the last vestige of your ability. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Success is follow through, regardless of where it leads.
What renders humanity both lovable and admirable is our surprising capacity to keep at things that matter to us. We could define what truly matters as that which we keep on doing, irrespective of the outcome. Failures in love can spurn even greater attempts; failures in striving can motivate us to work
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