Success v Failure: 4 questions to define the undefined.

For as long as I can remember, failure has been something that is avoided at all costs.

The mainstream connotation of the word failure suggests that we have done something terribly wrong and that we are at the end of the road.

If we fail, we fear the loss of life as we know it to be right now. Financially, romantically, among our friends. The list goes on.

The fear, the perception, around what it means to fail is so great for most of us that it holds us back from trying anything outside of our “tried and true.”

But what is failure, really?

The way I perceived it was as follows: the word failure suggested there was nothing worthwhile that came from the cause of the journey to the failure, and that the failure in and of itself has no value.

Failure is defined as the lack of desired success or not meeting the desired outcome.

Are there ways we fail every day that we are blind to or choose to not see?

And what is success? What does it mean to be successful?

Many of us default to believing success means having all the things.

(That’s what the mainstream tells us, anyway.)

Few of us take the time to explicitly redefine success for ourselves in our adulthood, which leaves us on a path to something vague and intangible that never quite feels like enough.

How ever we define success, is it possible the mainstream connotation of the word is incomplete?

Success is defined as the accomplishment of an aim or purpose.

If we haven’t explicitly redefined the meaning of success for ourselves, in all aspects of life, is there one specific date when the vague success can be achieved, and if not met, the entire effort was a failure?

In this situation, if success is a goal we are always shooting for in the distant future, it’s now more of a journey than a vague destination (that we never seem to reach).