Success and Failure in Life

Everything I needed to know about success I learned from the Tortoise and the Hare.

Ok. Not that one.

This one.

It's a classic story and one that has been told to children ever since Aesop "wrote" it centuries ago. Everyone uses it to teach kids that speed doesn't necessarily win the race, that slow and steady wins.

Recently, I started looking at this simple fable and little differently. It's not about speed or steadiness. It's about not giving up. It's about not taking what you have for granted. It's about what one person can do if they put their mind to it. Slow or fast, you will get to the end if you just keep trying and putting one foot in front of the other. Just like the tortoise.

Anyway this all started from a series of tweets back in June.

Lack of success does not equal failure. Failure only happens when you are not willing to reach for your dreams. #thoughtsatapark
— M. Andrew Patterson (@M_A_Patterson) June 17, 2014

Notice I said "reach for" and not just "reach". Success is a measure of effort and will, not of attainment. Big difference
— M. Andrew Patterson (@M_A_Patterson) June 17, 2014

It's the tortoise and the hare. Tortoise had the will to succeed. Hare only had the ability. Tortoise won. It's really that simple.
— M. Andrew Patterson (@M_A_Patterson) June 17, 2014

There were other tweets that day where I waxed philosophically about writing and success and failure, but these three tweets are what it comes down to. If you try to attain your goals, you are succeeding whether you reach them or not. Goals are just the pie in the sky "I want to get there" kind of thing. One of my goals is to be a better person. I will never reach this goal. Not that I can't be a good person, only that I am always striving to be a better person.

At the last Academy Awards, Matthew McConaughey gave an acceptance speech that some people hated and others loved. Whatever your feelings about it, I remember one part of it where he said:

So you see every day, every week, every month and every year of my life, my hero’s always 10 years away. I’m never gonna be my hero. I’m not gonna attain that. I know I’m not, and that’s just fine with me because that keeps me with somebody to keep on chasing.

A lot of people thought he was being self-centered. He wasn't. His goal was to always be a better person tomorrow than he was today. I have that same goal in all aspects of my life. It gives me something to focus on. To dream about. To want. To be that person in 10 years that is better than the person I am today. The moment I stop trying is the moment I fail. It's the moment I die.

If I keep striving, I will always succeed. This is why I don't view not reaching an arbitrary goal during the month a failure. Those are just sign-posts on the way to getting better. So whether it's #writemotivation, NaNoWriMo, weight loss, Grad School, or some other goal I've set for myself. I succeed because I made the effort.

These are my #writemotivation goals for the month. I don't have writing on here because I'm writing something under my penname.

1. Beta reading two revised novels
2. Cheer on my #writemotivation peeps!
3. Try to get some real blogging in
4. Do gradschool homework.

'Till Next Time