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Saturday, August 8, 2009

Living with Purpose and Passion

One of my favorite blog site recently posted "Defining success". I thought it was a really interesting question and posted the follow response..

It just as helpful to define failure and/or what success is not... I think for some people that is a lot easier because we all have a very strong emotional response to the fear of failure. Where as the positive happiness seems to be much more elusive.

Failure is when I stop listening or seeking good ideas
Failure is when I worry about being right for other people
Failure is when I don't care.
Failure is when I care more about the end result then doing something I believe in.
Success is not a goal and it's not the achievement.
Success is not a process.
Success is not about being right.

Success is the mental and emotional engagement to the attempt to reach the goal. Success is being passionate about trying to reach that goal. I can completely fail to reach the goal and still feel that I succeed. I'm rarely bothered by the fear of failure as long as I'm mentally and emotionally engaged. I can be wrong and I'm wrong often. I'll acknowledge the wrong and try to make it right. I don't need to wait until the end some long process to measure my success. Every night, I can ask myself did I have a successful day. Every moment I can ask myself is the choice I'm making now a successfully one.

I want live a purposeful life (measured by goals and achievements). And I want to live a passionate life (measured by success vs failure). When someone can find a way merge the two, I believe he/she will be on the road to happiness.