How to Succeed Every Moment Even When Youre Failing

success

it’s something we think about a lot that

desperately want and strive for so much

so there are already over a thousand

other ted talks on the subject

but i’m not here today to talk to you

about traditional

notions of success i’m here to talk to

you about

how you can succeed even when you’re

failing

when you think about what traditional

success looks like

it might conjure images of wealthy

celebrities

who build leadership academies for girls

first ladies

who write the best selling memoirs of

all time

or activists who fight to equalize the

world

if achieving monumental goals like this

is what it takes to be considered a

success

well i don’t know about you but it makes

me feel destined to be a spectacular

failure and while we might not be quite

holding ourselves to the standard of

becoming

oprah michelle or a mighty suffragette

we do in many cultures hyper focus

on goal achievement as the measure of

success

these might be professional goals like

getting a degree

or promotion parenting goals like

getting a kid into a good college

creative goals like having a painting

commissioned

or citizenship goals of getting women

equal pay

for equal work you set a goal

you take steps to achieve it if you do

so you’re a success

by this definition though on the flip

side

if you don’t achieve the goal you’re a

failure

i think we have this all wrong now

some will argue that failure is good

that the one thing the most successful

people in the world have in common

is that they’ve experienced failure more

often than others

but i’d like to argue that failure to

achieve their goals is not

really the thing that these successful

people likely have in common

for those of you who play sports if i

were on the pitch or the court or the

field and i offered up a magic

spell that would give you the victory

without ever having to touch a ball

would you take me up on it the goal is

to win after all

and this would make you a success for

all you parents

what is the goal of parenting i know i’d

like my two children to become

kind loving independent contributing

adults

what if my magic spell could turn your

kids into exactly the humans you’d like

them to be

your goal of having your kids turn out

to be great adults

would be achieved you’d be a success as

a parent

there’s just one catch you have to hand

them over and poof

i will give them back to you when

they’re 30 year olds

now maybe if you have two-year-olds or a

teenager you might

take me up on this but in general most

parents would not

and why is that because the whole point

playing the game and going through the

process of parenting

not just achieving the goal of winning

or having kids who turn out to be great

adults

we can want those things and work in

ways to make them more likely

but perhaps we need a shift in focus

here now i’m not just repackaging it’s

not whether you win or lose it’s how you

play the game or

life is about the journey and not the

destination i mean that

is partly what i’m saying but there’s

more to it than this

allow me to share an example of my own i

love writing and i have a couple

professional psychology books that i’ve

published but what i’m talking about is

creative and personal writing and i have

about

a dozen pieces at varying stages of

completion

children’s picture books and poems

personal essays

even the beginning of a ya novel and

memoir

and so my goal for my creative writing

the outcome i desire

is to get published now

i have submitted many of these pieces

for publication

and i’ve been doing this for over 10

years

can you guess how many of those pieces

i’ve had published

exactly one and that was just this past

year

so by our earlier definition of success

i have a goal i set out to achieve it

um i would be a spectacular

failure of a writer so maybe it’s time

to hang up the typewriter

but this is the exact problem with an

over focus on goal achievement

as the measure of success when we don’t

get the outcome we desire

we stop moving forward even if what

we’re doing

deeply matters to us and most

importantly

we’re playing a rigged game because

goals are outcomes and outcomes are

almost entirely outside of our control

so for example you might have a goal of

getting a new job

getting married or changing

discriminatory practices at your kids

elementary school just to

pull an example out of thin air and you

can certainly take steps to make that

more likely

but whether or when it ultimately

happens is kind of out of your hands

so what happens after you send out 20

resumes spend

six months doing online dating or make a

stellar presentation to the school

administrators

and you don’t land the job find the

perfect mate

or affect meaningful change if you see

these as

failures you very well may give up

you may stop moving forward what if

there was a better way

now as both a therapist and a writer i

would never just

tell a client or a reader what that

better way was

what’s the fun in that they say show

don’t tell

so i would show them because that’s

really the best way to

get a concept is to experience it

personally firsthand

so what i’d like to ask you to do is get

a pen or a pencil anything you can hold

in your hand it doesn’t have to write

now seriously go get a pen or a pencil

really go get a pen or a pencil

okay now i want you to think about a

goal

that you’ve been working hard to achieve

something that you’ve been putting a ton

of energy into attention effort

both physically and mentally and when

you have those details in your mind i

want you to grasp the pen

as tightly as would represent all that

you’ve been putting toward achieving

that goal

this could be the worries the

researching any

planning or problem solving getting

reassurance from other people

and and then of course whatever actions

or tasks you’ve actually

engaged in squeeze that pen and notice

how hard you’re holding it

give it a number zero to ten and just

notice how it feels

now i want you to release your grip by

about 50 so

you know if you’re holding it in at

eight try holding it at a four

and notice how that feels how it’s

changed how it feels differently than

before

and now hold the pen as lightly as

possible without letting it drop

and notice how that feels and how it’s

different from before

now what’s the one thing that hasn’t

changed

you’re still holding the pen so maybe

instead of hyper focusing on goal

achievement as our

main or even only measure of success we

can continue to move forward with the

actions that make realizing our goals

more likely

but while holding the outcomes more

lightly now

of course when we pursue a goal like

getting a job or finding a spouse or

writing an organizational wrong

if we don’t get the outcome we desire

rejection is painful

let’s think about why that is i would

argue it’s because

what we’re pursuing is important to us

pain is like a bright red neon arrow

pointing at exactly what matters in your

heart

consider what keeps you up at night is

it worry about whether

netflix or hbo is going to stay in

business