by Beth Vogt @BethVogt
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| "Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm." Winston Churchill |
People like to talk
about success—they like to bandy about different definitions for it. Success is
this. Success is that.
And they’re all
usually talking about something as far from failure as you can get.
I’ve been reading
Alton Gansky’s book Imagination@ Work. (Alton’s a friend and a colleague.
I admire him. Even if
I didn’t know him, I’d recommend his book. It’s like a series of “here’s what
I’ve been thinking about” conversations with a witty, intelligent guy.)
But back to the topic
at hand: failure.
Alton poses the
question: What would you do, if you knew you could not fail? (That
is a topic for another blog.)
I answered his
question by writing this question in my journal: How do you define
failure?
And then I wrote:
Success—less than
And by that I mean
that what appears to be success in one person’s eyes can feel like a failure in
someone else’s.
Say, for example, I
land a book contract.
But I don’t earn out
my advance.
Or I don’t win an
award.
Or I don’t get offered
a second contract.
Or I don’t
______________ (fill in the blank).
It’s the whole “being
nibbled to death by ducks” experience. Turning success into failure
because it wasn’t good enough.
But Beth, you say,
Winston Churchill was talking about success—and defining it as facing failure
enthusiastically.
I know. And I love his
definition.
But Churchill got me
thinking. And so did Alton. We need to enthusiastically face both our failures
and our successes and not let the little duckies (dare I name them comparison and envy and disappointment?)
nibble them all to pieces.
In Your Words: How do you
define failure or success? And how do you face them with enthusiasm?
TWEETABLE
Defining success - in life and in #writing - via @BethVogt on @EdieMelson (Click to Tweet)
Beth K. Vogt believes God’s best often waits behind the doors marked “Never.”
A nonfiction writer and editor who said she’d never write fiction, Beth is now a novelist with Howard Books. She enjoys writing inspirational contemporary romance because she believes there’s more to happily-ever-after than the fairy tales tell us. Connect with Beth on her website, Twitter, Facebook, or check out her blog on quotes, In Others’ Words.
