#217: Success is becoming
“Success is the process of becoming the person you needed to be to achieve what you have”
This quote slapped me in the face.
“Success” is subjective, it’s personal.
“Success” is comparative, it’s societal.
Success is status, wealth, material possessions.
Success is happiness, contentment, time, inner peace, freedom.
Wherever I feel I have succeeded, I am left feeling like I failed a thousand times..
My successes are littered with a thousand fumbling failures along the way.
The conversation remains binary. I either succeed or I fail, with no in between.
Or, there's a trade off between success and failure.
If I fail, I deflect into a success of learning and experience.
If I succeed, I find the failure of what else I didn’t achieve.
This is alive for me right now as I continue to write the first draft of my next book, Jack the Lad (Bridget Jones’s Diary for Men) and I think about success.
I think about it being a global best seller, a film or a netlix series.
I imagine the series of books. Jack the Lad, the Boyfriend, the Husband, the Father.
I see myself on Graham Norton talking about the book alongside Stormy who’s just released his latest album and Tom Hanks his latest film.
Yet I know that this is arbitrary, that this is a dream, that this outcome is uncontrollable and even if achieved, will leave me with another trade off of success and failure.
Success is pitched as something that isn’t ours to take, rather, something bequeathed to us.
I’ve spent years chasing success. Chasing validation, chasing external recognition, chasing enlightenment and inner peace. Always hoping for that sweet feeling of success.
It's a dangerous game. If we’re lucky we’ll be recognised. Perhaps a publisher agrees to publish your book, or an investor to invest in your company.
These moments create fleeting feelings of success, of being seen, of recognising where I have got to.
“Success is the process of becoming the person you needed to be to achieve what you have”
This quote though, this has struck me. This feels new. This feels like I can control what success is for me.
In this sense. Success is the process of writing a book that I have never written before.
Success is me completing a run I’ve never done.
Success is me being the person that has done those things. Success is me training for the ultra run. Success is me showing up on the page to write.
Success isn’t in the future. Success is here. Success is now.
Success is showing up. Success is the process of becoming.
Success is becoming
Success isn’t at the finish line, or on the last line of the first draft.
Success is now, because success is me becoming the person I need to be to complete these tasks or achieve these things.
In business, is success a selling a company and making millions? Or is it becoming the person that can build something of value that another wants to buy?
I thought success is about money, status or a position of personal happiness.
I believe success is about me becoming who I believe I can be.
James x
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