If At Last You Don't Succeed, Redefine Success

A few years ago I ran my first marathon and finished with a respectable time of 3:33. The following year I made a goal to finish under 3:30. Everything was going great until mile nine when I pulled my left calf muscle.

I sat on a bench and began to roll my calf with a half-empty Gatorade bottle. As the 3:30 pacer group ran by and disappeared down the trail, I realized my goal was not going to be achieved.

I rolled my calf for about five minutes. Then I got off the bench and started running again. I'd like to claim it was perseverance, but it was also pride. I was embarrassed at the possibility of riding a golf cart back to the finish line.

It was a slow, painful slog. Other pacer groups continued to pass me. The 3:45 group passed me. Then the 4:00 group offered me encouragement as they passed me. Someone with a jogging stroller passed me. That was humbling.

Several hours and 17.2 miles later I limped across the finish line with a time over four hours. Everything hurt, but I could not have been happier. Simply finishing had become my success.

If you ask five people what makes someone successful, chances are you will get five different answers. Our values systems are unique. We look at different scoreboards.

Examples of success I often see lauded include:

• Financial - Money is a universal standard of measure, so it's an easy reference. It's an awfully big scale though.
• Relationships - Ever heard terms like "successful" or "strong" applied to a marriage or friendship? Or even a parent child relationship? A lot of us apply scorecards to relationships.
• Professional - Working for prestigious companies and achieving increasingly impressive titles from the prestigious companies. Sometimes LinkedIn feels like its own big scoreboard.
• Athletic - My story above illustrates this one.
• Political - It can be as small as your home owners association, or as big as geo-politics.
• Artistic - Having your art, regardless of domain, recognized and valued by others.

This list is far from exhaustive but hopefully it illustrates that success is defined broadly and subjectively. No particular measure of success is more or less important than the other.

I think success is an illusion. It looks real, but it doesn't exist in a tangible form. It's like a rainbow or the horizon. If you can accept that success is an illusion, it should immediately follow that failure is also an illusion. They are both labels we apply subjectively based on our unique values systems. At yet, these labels hold tremendous power to shape or life choices and our happiness.

This isn't about being a delusional optimist. The scoreboards in life are visible to everyone. Some companies have bigger market capitalization than others. Some athletes go home with eight gold medals and some go home with no medals. In every domain there will always be those with higher and lower scores, with slower or faster finish times. We can't ignore facts, but we are not compelled to label them.

Whether to apply the label of success or failure based on a scoreboard is a choice. If you get to choose your label, why not just choose the good one and be happy about it?

In the movie "Monty Python and The Search for the Holy Grail" there is a famous battle between King Arthur and the Black Night. The fight ends in a draw, but both knights can make a strong case for victory. My favorite scene is after King Arthur cuts off the Black Knight's arms, King Arthur kneels to reflect on his "victory". The now armless Black Knight runs over and kicks him in his bowed head. What a brilliant move. I want to have that kind of grit.

Here's the scene if by chance you've never seen it:

Career ending injuries happen in the sports world every day. Personal relationships end. Good employees can make honest mistakes and lose their jobs. Promotions go the wrong people. Necessary changes to corporate policies or culture are rejected or too slowly implemented. How can can we manage to stick success stickers on these situations?

Finding success means looking past unfairness and discomfort to spot the personal growth that occurs when we face adversity. The act of searching for good breeds gratitude and roots out entitlement. It teaches us virtues like patience and persistence and kindness.

The scoreboards in life do not define success or failure. This is especially true in our workplaces. Focus on the next step. Keep running. Never admit defeat. And if at last you don't succeed, redefine success.