What is Success?

Have you ever felt like a complete failure? Ridiculed by your friends, laughed at by your family, scorned by your dog! Perhaps the key to ensuring this never happens again is by revisiting how you define failure, and therefore, how you define success. Do your definitions empower you or do they weaken you? Most of us employ disastrous definitions of success and failure which make the accomplishment of success impossible from our own perspective. Over time our repeated perception of failure leads us to eventually give up on our dreams and settle for far less than our potential because we don't want to fail anymore. We'll take even self-destructive actions if it means we can avoid what we have come to identify as failure.

I know what you're thinking. "But Rob, surely it can't be that easy, can it? If I just revise my definition of failure, then BAM!, I'm instantly a success? After all, in the end isn't it just results that count? Either we win or we lose. Success or failure. I can't just declare winners losers and losers winners without totally deluding myself, can I?"

One of my favorite coaches on leadership and success is the late John Wooden. Coach Wooden led the UCLA men's basketball team to 10 national championships in 12 years, including, at one stretch, 7 in a row. This was an unprecedented accomplishment at the time and, may be equaled, but never exceeded. He probably knows a thing or two about success. He developed his own definition and rules about success that, at first, seemed ridiculous to me. One rule that his father taught him home on the farm was "never try to be better than somebody else." Can you imagine that? Here is a man who made history coaching his teams to beat others more consistently than any other ever, and one of his fundamental life-rules was - "never try to be better than the other guy."

Another rule from Dad was to always learn from others, and a third, never cease trying to be the best you can be. These are all rules that are in your own control. Coach Wooden says that if we spend to much time on things we can't control we will lose control of the things we can.

From these simple rules Coach came up with his definition of success and here it is:

Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable.

That bears repeating. Success is peace of mind (and internal state to you) which is a direct result of self-satisfaction (another internal state) in knowing you made the effort (you and no one else made the effort) to become the best of which you are capable. Nowhere in that definition does it mention others or does it mention outcomes or results. There is no winning or losing. When asked about the most successful players he ever coached, one would have thought Wooden would answer with players whose names everyone knows, like Kareem Abdul Jabaar, or Bill Walton. But instead he mentioned two virtual unknowns who never found NBA success. He said that when he first saw them practice as college freshmen he thought, "If we ever need these two as starters then the program will have fallen on hard times indeed." However, by the time both finished their UCLA careers they were starters on national championship teams. What made them great successes was not their level of talent or the number of victories, but rather, they took the talent they did have and became absolutely the best they could be.

If you adopted Coach Wooden's definition of success would it change how you feel about experiences in your life? Would you enjoy life's journey just a little more if this was your definition of success rather than one requiring "victory?"

I once coached an optimist baseball team of twelve year-olds my son Andrew played on. The league was set up so that all the new kids ended up on the same team. I had to play a child at second base who couldn't throw to first because it was too far. Yet we started off with thirteen kids who showed up all season, practice and games. They gave it their all. When the season started they couldn't make an out or score a run. The first inning would go on for a while until the opposing coach would declare 3 outs so my kids would get a chance to bat. But gradually as the season went on those players got better and better. I can still hear their cheers the first time they got three outs in one inning. By the end of the season they were actually competitive with the other teams. They didn't win a game that season but I was so proud of every one of those kids. They did their best at every practice and every game. And I know, looking back on that season, every one of them felt like a success.

Coach Wooden liked this poem and I will end with it:

At God's footstool to confess

A poor soul knelt and bowed his head.

"I failed!" he cried. The Master said

Thou didst thy best. That is success.