gocomics.com/Pearls Before Swine
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Sorry, Pig, successful entrepreneurs wouldn’t agree with you. They would say you need to take risks and be comfortable with failure if you want to succeed. For instance, Sara Blakley, a self-made billionaire, is grateful to her dad. He used to ask her at dinner, “What did you fail at this week?” For other examples see Fail Fast: 7 Female Entrepreneurs on the Mistakes That Moved Them Forward.
I personally have never been that interested in what the world calls success. For me it was creating a life that I love. And any creative project means trying things to see what works and what doesn’t. It’s not about success and failure, it’s about coming up with ideas and testing them to see what changes need to be made. When something doesn’t work, it’s not failure, it’s just feedback. Well, yeah, it can be scary at times, but it’s a lot better than the alternative.
For me, at least. What about for you?
November 16, 2014
I doubt very much that anyone can be comfortable with failure. I would imagine that eventually successful people would be able to cope with failure and other setbacks better than others. I personally never did try and succeed in anything. Whatever success that I had, and they were many, just happened and I enjoyed them. I have had my share of failures but though I was not comfortable with them, I was able to cope with the aftermath and get on with life. The coping mechanism was not deliberate and I think it is just that I am made that way by nature and nurture.
I understand that works for you, but I couldn’t disagree more with your assessment of other people.
That’s cheerfulmonk in a nutshell. When things don’t go the way I would want them to go, my favorite prayer is
Any god of mine would have to have a sense of humor and not take either of us too seriously.
Does disappointment hurt? Of course, but in more practical and less high-falutin’ terms, if you have to go through the pain you might as well get something from it.
Your response to Rummuser’s comment was right on the mark. That might scare some people off from commenting, but not Ramana (Rummuser).
I doubt anyone would be scared, more likely not interested so they’ll just ignore it. That’s the beauty of blogging, people can talk about things near and dear to their hearts, and other people can pick and choose what to read.
god has laughed with me for many years now i expect!
i have been lucy and ethel rolled into one at times. too many to count here.
my secret to failure is just … get up. dust yourself off. get back on the horse.
remember i was raised by a horseman. that analogy was not mere words… but totally expected! LOLOL.
did i learn from each mistake? i hope so! but it wasn’t … ok. now i’ve learned that.
i think it simply registered somewhere in my brain. 😀
in terms of success… i abhor america’s mainstream idea of it…
materialism to the core. who gives a flip for a mc mansion and the stress and the cars and TV’s and cruises and finery. YUK. if that is your success… you can have it.
now we have the rest of the world … the young anyway… thinking that is success. SAD.
Yep. If you fall down, get up. And it helps if you have a general idea of where you’re trying to go.
About success — in general we’re status-conscious, hierarchical creatures. Who’s to say that the current U.S. idea of success is any worse than that of some of the Native American tribes — high status went to the warriors who took the most scalps.
I like Hugh Prather’s,
I have to keep reminding myself of that.
PS I’m so glad you have that timer. I missed you!
When I was a girl, I was successful at everything. That’s not to brag – it’s to explain the next part. Then, at college, I took a course that I found to be the most boring course ever. I stopped attending, tried to keep up just via the reading, and received a barely passing grade. I expected my parents to be angry. Instead, they told me they were thrilled that I had finally stopped chasing success for the sake of success.
It took a good number more years of living a conventionally successful life before I learned that I really didn’t care about conventional success at all. I’ve finally found a life that makes me happy – and I really couldn’t care less if anyone else sees it as “successful”. The funny thing is that my father, the very man who was so proud of my barely passing a college course, keeps pushing me to write a book about my experiences. I feel as if he’s setting a new bar for “success” – and I’ve told him so.
Very fruitful topic to contemplate! Thanks.
Good for you! I’m glad your folks were supportive earlier, and it does seem strange that your father wants you to write a book now.
I still maintain that no one can be COMFORTABLE with failure.
Comfort isn’t always important. People can be uncomfortable when they’re having babies, raising children, climbing mountains, meditating on a retreat, etc. That doesn’t mean they wish they weren’t doing it.
When I think of discomfort I think of when I was young and traveling around Europe on a shoe string. One night we slept on the hard wooden benches in a train station. Comfortable? No way. Excited and happy? Oh, yeah!
I’ve had lots of small, unimportant failures but no really huge, catastrophic ones. Whether that means I’m lucky because I’ve had a relatively trouble-free life or unlucky because I haven’t learnt valuable lessons from all my disasters, I’m not sure.
Sometimes it’s easier to learn from the small failures.
But Jean you have got “success” to what you want…it doesn’t have mean something you shout from the rooftops “look at me, I’m a successful (insert whatever)”
Just failure is a “success” as well, because you and probably a good percentage of everyone else will move on to the next scheduled thing…
It’s when you stop doing whatever because you can’t move on is the problem…then you stall!
I’m with you. If we’re inner-directed and one of our main goals is to keep learning and growing and enjoying the adventure of life, then we have control over whether or not the exercise was a success. And lets face it, we learn a lot more when things don’t go as we hoped/expected.
I’m excited for you with your new project!