This week I’ve been pondering measures of success. Why? I have a friend who is struggling. He seems paralyzed to make a change because he believes he recently failed, as he would characterize it, for the first time.
Prior to this “failure”, he had already accomplished great things. He earned a college scholarship, received a Masters Degree, made 6 figures, had a 15-year marriage, traveled extensively, won gold medals, and mentored numerous young men. He still works hard, is an excellent salesman, blogs regularly, writes poetry, loves his children, can do numbers in his head, and behaves ethically in a cutthroat business. I simply cannot see him as a failure. He’s not.
A few years ago, he tried a business venture that didn’t work out and cost him a lot of money. Around the same time, his family situation changed; his work situation became impossible because he refused to lie about his boss. Since that time, his financial situation has deteriorated leaving him feeling powerless to do anything but scramble to try to make the next payment – rent, car, cable bill, electric bill…. He does this by working at a job that he hates in an environment that is toxic. His successes are not celebrated by his boss or coworkers.
From my point of view, he is caught in a loop that goes something like this: I feel like a failure…I could file bankruptcy and be in a better position to make a change…Everyone would see I’m a failure….I feel like a failure…I could get a new job, but it has to pay enough to get me out of my financial hole…I am not qualified for the jobs I see that pay that much so I must depend on someone to give me a break…no one has given me a break…I feel like a failure…I am not a failure…if my ex-wife were more reasonable, my financial situation would be better…she’ll never change and I have no money to legally fight her…I feel like a failure…if I had been willing to lie about my former boss, I’d still have plenty of money…I wouldn’t respect myself, but no one else would see me as a failure…it’s their fault I feel this way…it’s their fault I no longer have that job…it’s their fault I feel like a failure…as long as I stay at a point where I am struggling, I can blame them for my bum deal…I’m not a failure, I was mistreated…I am miserable, but that is better than me being a failure…I will stay miserable…it is not my fault…I am mistreated…but I feel like a failure…I could take the initiative to change my situation, but then any possible failure would fall directly on me and I simply feel too terrified to fail again…I am a failure.
The seductive part of this loop is that there is some truth in there. He was mistreated, horribly. No one was held accountable for the maltreatment. The internet legacy of uninformed gossip that resulted still haunts him. Why does that result in him feeling like a failure and paralyzed for fear he will fail again?
Some of the blame falls on all of us and how we have come to measure success. The reason that this important is that most of us – me, you, your husband, your wife, your daughter, niece, son, cousin, best friend – run the risk of getting caught in a similar loop. The specifics will be different, but the result is the same. We sacrifice our potential best, healthiest, happiest, most loving and engaged selves to the fear that we will not measure up. We posture, pretend, acquire the outward trappings we (often correctly) believe others use to measure success and we hang onto to those while feeling miserable.
Some of us will make a valiant start out of the loop and then succumb only to start and succumb again. Some of us will attain the culture’s measure of success in our work lives, but fail in our relationships with spouses or children. Some of us will destroy our mental, physical, or spiritual health attempting to appear successful as husbands, wives, bosses, employees, and parents.
I am a less difficult person at work and with my children than I am with a partner. I know this and even now I catch myself behaving in ways that keep me from contributing to a partnership in the way I intend. Why? I feel scared. When I feel scared, I look for outward measures of what is normal or acceptable. Why? I don’t trust how I feel or am simply so caught in fear that I don’t know how I feel. Why? Because I grew up in an unsafe environment.
What I’ve had to, and continue to, learn, and what I hope for my friend to learn, is to no longer measure success in accumulation of money or possessions, working the hardest, being error free, meeting external expectations, having the right answer, having a perfect house, being the most organized, cooking the perfect dish every time, or even in great leaps forward.
My measures of success are now based on whether I stick with my intentions, give myself a break, have compassion for others, manage to be fully present in the moment, learn something when I feel I have erred, live according to my values, stay in touch with my feelings, allow myself to feel fear, practice healthy habits, tell myself the truth, say no when saying no is in line with my intentions, allow others to shift and change, fulfill my obligations, practice courage, apologize when appropriate, communicate my needs from a place of kindness, feel grateful for the lessons difficulty teaches me, celebrate progress, and make baby steps along the journey.
There are still moments I feel like a failure, but as long as I’ve learned something it is hard to get stuck there.
I’d love to hear how you measure success. Let me know in the comments section below.
