Yes, I know everyone says that success is in the eye of the beholder. But that doesn't mean that you don't feel the stress. Stress and feelings and perceptions are all linked together, you know. Pay attention. Your mind and body are trying to get a message through. Just because something is positive does not mean it can't hurt you.
Step One: Learn to Manage Success
Understanding the Meaning of Success
Success has a lot of different meanings, so I'm going to start out with a couple of definitions of success to help you better understand where we're going in this article. Success is the achievement of a goal, and success is the feeling you allow yourself to have when you've met a goal. As in, "I am a success."
The first definition is a little dry, and can be wide open to interpretation. The second definition is narrower, but potentially even more dangerous than the first. Most people don't start tossing the word success around until you have a habit of meeting lots of goals in a particularly obvious manner. Then you start feeling like success is headed your way. And that's when the second definition gets in your way.
Success is meeting goals
We often make success a black and white proposition. Either you meet your goal completely, or you are not a success. This is far too dangerous a proposition to make with such a powerful word as success. Every time you meet any stage of a goal, you are succeeding. And even if you only achieve part of your goal, you are a success for that item. It is critical to remember that success comes in small steps, and each success builds on the previous one, until you've created a mountain of success. That's what people usually use as their measure for calling something successful - that mountain.
But not everyone climbs, or creates, mountains of success. Are they all failures? I don't think so, and neither should you. Success is a path to follow, not an end result. Each success opens the door to another goal, and its inherent success or failure. You're never done with your path to success - you will walk it from now until the day you die.
"I am a success."
Remember that I mentioned above that this phrase is truly dangerous to those walking the success path. Think about it a bit. It's a declarative sentence. I have "reached success" and I don't have any further to go. Nothing left to do. I've made it. We all need resting points in our goals - a place where we can stop and relax for a little bit, pat ourselves on the back, and prepare for the next stage.
It's okay to do that, to tell yourself that you have been a success at reaching a particular goal. You won your tennis match today, you completed your exercise program this week, you met your sales goals for this quarter. Those are milestones in your goals, and you should be proud when you meet them. But you need to remember that a rest stop is not the end of the road. If you spend too long at the way point, you may lose your path to the next success.
Step Two: Hold Your Success Lightly
Holding on to Success
The first lesson here is learning to hold on to your success. Failure is a big word, as you have read in the article about managing failure. As such, it can hold great power over your feelings and your goals. It's easy to substitute a failure thought for a success thought if you're not paying attention, so keeping success foremost in your mind is critical.
You may have heard this idea a number of other ways in self-help and success books. Probably because it is such an important key to managing your successful life and business. Take each success and wrap it up with pretty bows and wrapping paper, and store it carefully away in your long-term memory. Not too far away, though, because you'll want to take it out periodically and marvel in the beauty of your success.
When you're feeling down from missing a particularly important goal or milestone, use your past successes as levers into your mind to remind yourself of all of those successes upon successes. This helps you to focus on the positive elements of your goals and plans, and not get hung up with negative emotions.
Holding Success Lightly
This is where it gets tricky. We've all met egotists before. And probably a few super-egotists as well. People who are so saturated with their own success that you can barely stand to be around them. All you hear about is their latest wonderful success, how fantastic a person they are, how easily success jumps into their hat, and so forth.
Very few of us like people like that. Oh, yes, we might envy them, we might try to emulate them, or we might ask for their help if we are particularly brave, but few of us can bear to spend large amounts of time in their company.
Yes, I know that success books say that you should spend your time around successful people so you absorb all those successful vibes. But there are successes, and there are successes. The kind of person you should seek out are those who hold carefully but with a light hand on their success. These are the people to emulate.
Successes are just milestones in your goals. Everyone always has another one coming up, another goal to pursue, another success to measure up against. You want to have a few successes tucked away nearby so you can draw them out at will to help you bolster yourself in a particularly tough moment, but when you clutch them tightly to your chest, you risk paying so much attention to your current successes that you fail to pay proper attention to the path you are walking right now.
So am I a success or not?
If you're like me, you've asked that question quite a few times of yourself. Maybe even asked others whom you respect for an opinion. It's hard to measure an absolute "success" when so many of your successes are specific in nature. Does it take 10 successes, or 100? Do you have to meet X number of goals, or Y number of milestones? Instead of asking yourself these questions, trying to nail down success so tightly, consider this question instead.
Am I happy with where I currently stand?
Happy is much easier to measure than success. Are you feeling good about where you currently sit with your goals? Have you met enough milestones to pat yourself on the back and relax in the moment?
Happiness may seem elusive to you, but when you try to define success, you're really just looking for another word that says you can be happy with where you're at right now. Maybe even have a few bragging rights for your current goals. Take my advice - measure happy instead. If nothing else, it'll keep you from going overboard on the bragging so you don't turn into one of those people I described above.
Information for Managing Failure
Yes, I know everyone says that failure is in the eye of the beholder. But that doesn't mean that you don't feel the stress. Stress and feelings and perceptions are all linked together, you know. Pay attention. Your mind and body are trying to get a message through. You can cope with the stress, and the problem. You just need some tips and tools for keeping things manageable.
Learn to manage failure
Defining Failure
Some people are optimists; some people are pessimists. Both have definitions for success and for failure. Properly defining failure is the first step to turning it into a success.
So what exactly is failure? Everybody has things that they call failures. Diets, goals, businesses - it doesn't matter what it is, but how you define your success and failure. A failure is not a bad thing - it simply is. Once you recognize that failure is just the fact that you fell short of a goal, you begin to remove the awful sting that comes when you think or say this nasty word.
I used to be dreadfully afraid of failures - saying it, doing it, admitting it. It hurt. And I did quite a number on my confidence and my ego until I learned to recognize the value of failure.
The Positive Definition of Failure
The first thing you need to realize is that failing to reach a goal is like a signpost along the road. It says, "Sharp turn ahead. Slow down and take a look at where you are, where you are going, and what choices you are making." Notice that it doesn't say "WRONG turn." It doesn't tell you that you are a bad person, a failure, or anything else with negative connotations. All it does is remind you that you haven't made it to your goal yet, and maybe you need to make some adjustments.
Failure as a Means to Making an Adjustment
If you are the kind of person who needs concrete goals in order to keep yourself moving and on track, then you're bound to run into a few failure points along the way. Minor ones, or maybe even major ones. The size of the goal often determines just how much pain you burden yourself with along with that word "failure".
The trick is learning to put the spin on the word failure, using it as a roadsign to redefining your current goals and plans, rather than treating it like an endpoint, as so many of us do. Failures hurt because we think that we've reached the end of an idea, a goal or a plan. But plans and goals are ongoing, always changing and growing as life adds its complexity to our plans. So if your goals are always changing, why should failure be the end-all-be-all to them? Quite simply, it shouldn't, if you are keeping the definition of failure close at hand.
Remember that failures are simply warnings of a plan that needs an adjustment. Don't take it to heart, just take it to mind. Weigh it, think it through, and revise your plans if you feel that is going to help you better reach your ultimate goal. Just keep in mind that without those failures to help you guide your way through the minefield, life would be a lot trickier. I use failures to help me plan and re-plan my short-terms goals in pursuit of my long-term goals. Nothing less, and nothing more. Do that, and you rob the word "failure" of 99% of its ability to hurt you.
