Success is a matter of perspective - Fail Faster 4/20

A few months ago I came across a post by Chris Williamson on Facebook that left me thinking:

“Success is a strange thing. Presumably, we want success because we think a more successful life will bring us more happiness. Here’s the problem. We sacrifice what we want (happiness) for the thing that is supposed to get it (success).”

As I see it, this means that the sense of fulfillment and happiness is supposedly people’s motivation to become someone better. But this actually causes them to move away from that feeling.

When I started working on myself and on my business, I had a big anxiety problem (as I already told you). This was because every time I improved and grew as a person and as a professional, there was already someone better than me, which made me think I was still a failure (and this thought turned into a vicious cycle).

It was only after a while I noticed that I wasn't worried about getting that status of being the best, I was desperately moving away from my current status of being a “failure” (even though I was never a failure, it was just a thought in my head that I was letting define my self-image).

Nowadays, I have overcome my problem. I took a step back and developed an observant personality that is looking at me and my thoughts from a thirds person perspective, and evaluating what’s worth keeping and what’s not. That’s actually a coping technique I learned during that year of CBT.

Back when I lived in Brazil, and even a few years after moving to Portugal, my mother (the only source of income for the household) lived on a month-to-month basis, without savings, struggling to pay the bills (this is the reality for most people in the world). But she was happy. She didn’t feel like a failure because she was struggling. Not because we had financial safety or a great life, but because we decided to appreciate what we had. We decided to be happy.

That’s how I see live my life today: I am happy to wake up every day to work on what I love and I am aware that I have that privilege.

What I want you to leave with today is: What does failure look like to you and is it really failure at all or just a product of your intrusive thoughts comparing your life to other people’s lives on social media?

Failure is a powerful tool. But we have to know how to control it and not let it control us.