Quiet Success
What if I asked you to reverse the way you think about failure and success. If you oblige me, your view of life and the way you respond to it will change dramatically. Let’s take a quick look at how things would change for the betterment of all humans.
Failure
The experience of failure can be excruciating. It can turn your world inside out. Rather than hang your head in shame and endlessly beat yourself up when success is not achieved. With this reversal of mind you would immediately and automatically transform the experience into a celebrated opportunity. You would not be afraid to admit failure or speak about it openly and casually. You would view the lack of success as a sign to simply and calmly go back to the drawing board because you would know that what you had initially produced was not the truest or greatest reflection of who you are. You would view the situation as a gift because it would energize your ever-curious mind into imaginings that were attempting to come to mental fruition. Failure, then, would become an exciting adventure into new horizons of mind and infinite potential and creativity. Allowing failure to become simple and experience it as a teacher, you will find your confidence has skyrocketed. When we embrace failure as a friend rather than enemy, we give ourselves the mental space to design something better than originally planned and expected. And this alone is worth every drop of sweat put into arriving at the fruitfulness of failure.
Success
As for success, when it happens, we want to boisterously and enthusiastically announce our accomplishment to everyone we know, and often even to strangers. The excitement completely captures our mind and attention. However, by learning to embrace success with quiet humility, soft words, and concern for those who may not have succeeded in their specific efforts, we show them that failure is just as important as success, if not even more so. The quiet and gentle words we carefully and thoughtfully choose when sharing our achievement shows a willingness to soften the moments of disappointment, and sometimes envy, others may feel in the light of our success. Quiet success is so much more palatable to those who live and work with us. It is indicative of the considerate, careful, compassionate, and humble path we walk on this wonderful sojourn we call life.
“Truth be known, success and failure are equal in value. ”