The definition of success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.
- Winston Churchill
I like this guy. He seems to have a strong sense of humour. (Not least of all because of the dog-stones comment)
It’s interesting that I say this because Churchill was known to have suffered from depression and even coined the phrase “black dog”, in describing what he went through. How many of the “happy” people that we see are really sad on the inside?
I think of comedian Robin Williams, who committed suicide in 2014. Of course, I know nothing about the man and the internal workings of his mind (or indeed his life for that matter), but I do know that his work was pure genius.
How many people have the courage to say that they feel like they’re failing and need help?
With the Colgate-perfect smiles splattered all over social media, not least of all at this time of year, how do we know what is real? Is any of it? Is life really about going from failure to failure, and seeing what unfolds while we’re making other plans?
Mark Zuckerberg said that “the greatest success comes from the freedom to fail”. I like that definition. Nevertheless, I used to be the worst ‘failer’ at anything. I’d much rather not even try than fail. And given that I know that I have serious work to do in this area, I have recently adopted the mantra that I will lose 100% of the races that I don’t run.
I used to think that the definition of resilience was the ability just to get through something, Turns out, it’s about your ability to bounce back. So if I want to consider myself a resilient person, I should be able to fail, or be willing to fail, knowing that I can bounce back fairly well. Like I said, I’m a work-in-progress.
So with that, I leave you with the words of Gary Vaynerchuk: “Take the highest risk behaviour in the area of your life that could make you the happiest”.
Yes, it often leads to failure, but there’s something really fun about going down in flames as you do it.
