Failure OR Success? Who Decides?

We all want to succeed in life and that means something different to everyone. The dictionary definition of the word failure is the lack of success. So what does success mean? I thought you would never ask ... Success is defined as the accomplishment of an aim or purpose. With all of this in mind, why is it that in human nature we think that our success is measured by the people around us? We look at people that are in similar situations as us and we think that we have failed somehow because we do not have our sh*t as together as it would SEEM. The truth is that we all need to NOT worry about other people because they have an idea of success that is much different than our own. We are unique individuals and we are on our own unique path, looking at others will not help us. Success is relative. Only YOU truly know what your aim and purpose are therefore, only YOU can determine if you have succeeded or not. People will always formulate an opinion but your opinion is the only one that matters. Keep your eyes on the prize, do not let yourself be bothered by outsiders. If you are too busy looking at others it will do more harm than good. When you compare yourself to others you will always find the ways in which they are better than you. We fixate on their success and do not take into consideration what the person has overcome. Don’t focus on others, if you do, you are spending less time working on your own SH*TUFF.

We have adopted a misconception of what success actually means and our notion of success has also shaped what we believe failure is. Our notion is socially constructed and has trickled into our educational system, making it extremely difficult for people to truly explore their passions. This stops people from walking on their own path because they have a fear of failing, they take the “safest” path because it guarantees success or they are too busy doing what is expected of them. If you are walking down a path that is not meant for you, that will affect your level of happiness which is directly connected to how successful you will become. We want to make the people in our lives happy, but we have to keep our own happiness in mind when we are walking our path. Our parents have influenced how we think and we always want to make the people who raised us proud, as a result we will define our own success based on what THEY want for us. Take time to figure out what it is that YOU want and not what others want for you.

Many people think that success is defined by the amount of money you got in the bank. However, if we treat money as the ONLY component to our success we will learn that it is not everything. Having money is great, but if you are not happy with your life, have you truly succeeded? There is more to life than what kind of car you drive or how big your house is, all of that is nothing if you are not living a fulfilling life. Measuring your success according to your bank account, will result in a depressing existence. You will constantly be trying to get more and never be satisfied. Nothing in life is guaranteed including success and ESPECIALLY the number in your bank account. Do not make “money” your main focus when you are trying to measure your level of success.

When do we fail? When we give up. There is nothing worse than setting out on a journey and not crossing the finish line. Nothing is impossible to accomplish. We make our own restrictions and convince ourselves that we cannot do something. As long as we are still actively working towards our goal we are succeeding, but the moment we stop BELIEVING that we can do it, we have failed. There are moments in life where we may fail at our goals regardless of how hard we have worked but there is a lot to gain from the experience altogether. We need to look at the glass as half full, focus on what you have and where you need to go. At the end of the day your accomplishments are always much greater than your failures. When working towards your goal, stick to it, achieve your full potential and figure out where you need to improve. Always try your best, so that at the end of the day you can say with full confidence that you gave it all that you had.

~Go be a success.

H O P E

A feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen. If you have air in your lungs and blood in your veins you have hope. Hope is what drives the human mind to move forward in life. When faced with a rather grim situation, hope is that agent that brings positivity to it, making us believe that things HAVE to get better. Hope is ALL we have, without it we have no reason… we have nothing. Humans have a limited time on this planet and we have to make the best of what we have and look to the positives in our lives. We do not know what tomorrow holds, but we hope that whatever is in store for us will be favorable. Hope is making the best of what you have, so that you can have a better outcome for tomorrow. When life gives you lemons, you make a lemon drop and plant the seeds so you can get more lemons in the future. ;)  ... It takes YEARS for a lemon tree to begin to produce lemons ...  hope is the same way. You should never give up on the tree because you do not know when that tree will bless you with the fruits of your labor (hard work)... When you have hope you should never lose it because once it pays off it will be all the more fulfilling.

Hope can be difficult to hold on to when all things seem lost. When people go through depression or a traumatic experience, it may seem that there is no way you can recover from it. However, somewhere in the back of one’s mind we have to believe that things will change for the better. BELIEVING that you will overcome the obstacle is half the battle. Once you have the mindset that things will get better, they HAVE to. If you hit rock bottom, there is nowhere else to go but up. Having hope will allow you to see beyond your current predicament into the future. One’s mind set can be the difference between one’s failure and one’s success, when you think you cannot do something chances are you will not reach that goal. When you reach this crossroads say to yourself, “Try, try again, and NEVER say ‘I can’t.”  Simply saying these words to yourself will affect your mentality toward the situation. It will make all the difference in your outcome and stops you from throwing in the towel.

Who remembers all of the controversy surrounding the Winter Solstice of 2012? The end to the Maya Calendar, or in other words the end of the WORLD? How many of us stopped our lives because we were betting on the fact that we were going to die? The Maya Calendar ended and some INTELLIGENT people took this as the world was going to end … but the majority of us, “normal” people still went about our lives and prepared for our futures. … we had hope. Granted not everyone believed that the world was going to end, but if everyone had, things would have been very different. Had we lost that hope, everyone's lives would have been in chaos, no one would have prepared for the day after. What we hope for tomorrow determines what our actions will be today. During this event I was finishing up my LAST semester at university, had I believed the world was going to end, I would not have bothered to get my education. However I had hope that the world was not going to end, as a result I secured my future by earning my degree.

We do not know what our future holds, and when we begin to think about our future we make a choice about how to pursue that life path. We think about what career will make us feel fulfilled. Once we begin to pursue that career path we hope that it works out for us. The reason we form ideas and construct dreams is because we have hope. We hope that they will one day come true, and that the future will be better than the present moment. There are no simple roads to success and when we hit a brick wall we look to the power of HOPE to see us through that rough patch. Without having hope, we would give up LONG before reaching or even realizing our potential. Some say babies are a blank slates and we learn basic things in life from walking to learning, and how to communicate, but if we gave up every time we fell no one would know how to walk. Throughout our life we WILL fall down, and having hope is what helps us get back up. If you fall 6 times you HAVE to get up 7 times, those 6 falls do not matter, it is the seventh rise that matters the most! Don’t nobody wanna stay down!   

Even when we hope with every fiber of our being, there will be times where all of our hope will be for nothing, and disappointment settles in where that hope once stood. That disappointment is not the “end,” but it is an opportunity to LEARN. We are not perfect human beings, there are many things that are in our control and if we have made the wrong decisions it is up to us to learn from our actions. Hope keeps us motivated, and it give us a reason for living. Our very existence is not based on a promise, but it is based on having hope for tomorrow and living for the future.

~Dream. HOPE. Future.