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PUBLISHED: ‘Note Verbale‘, Manila Times (Sunday-Career Section) - 3 June 2007 Issue

Individual success or failure is often measured in terms of the state of prosperity or fame that a person attained.  This is a poor and myopic standard though.

Success is relative and thus would vary from person to person depending on his or her personal goals in life. These goals may not even fall within the ambit of the ‘prosperity or fame’ frame.  Everyone, and not only celebrities, the rich or the powerful, has the right to claim his or her own success. Everyone has the equal opportunity to succeed.

The road to success should always begin with the first step of finding out personal goals. One may have several goals that would lead to one big goal. But the most important thing is to clearly define what that goal is. Not having a goal is like jumping off from the starting line of a race without any clear direction in mind where to go or where the finish line is.  In this situation, there is no way to gauge success for sure. And the ultimate effect is failure.

Failure is a fact of life.  No matter how much or how well one prepares, there would always be some events, conditions or extraneous circumstances that would stand as a barrier towards personal success. The one good thing about having smaller and short-term goals is that sporadic failures in meeting them do not necessarily prevent a person from succeeding. Sporadic failures in fact could be vital factors in the attainment of the ultimate goal. They could make success sweeter and fuller in a sense.

Some goals are set too low and some to high. It really does not matter. Goals are driven by individual motives and capacity anyway. The only difference is that the higher the dream, bigger and greater efforts are required.  Life coach and motivational speaker and author of “If Success Is a Game, These Are the Rules”, Cherie Carter-Scott, aptly said: “Ordinary people believe only in the possible. Extraordinary people visualize not what is possible or probable, but rather what is impossible. And by visualizing the impossible, they begin to see it as possible.”

Once that goal is set and clearly defined, a person needs at the minimum – focus, determination and motivation – to move closer to the realization of his or her dream.

In this busy, complicated and crazy world, there is a lot of stuff that really generates, attracts and entices special interest and challenges to make a person deviate from the things that need to be done to achieve a purpose. And a conscious effort to stay focused, could spell the difference in knowing how soon a person could accomplish a goal, or whether or not the person could attain it after all.

Determination is also critical factor in achieving one’s goals. The lack of determination would always put the sense of focus in great jeopardy. Without determination, small and sporadic failures become a major hindrance and a source of discouragement. “It is the ‘follow through’ that makes the great difference between ultimate success and failure, because it is so easy to stop”, said American scientist, social philosopher and a 1933 cover of the Time Magazine, Charles Franklin Kettering.

Of the essential ingredients to succeed, motivation is perhaps that most crucial.  Without motivation, it is extremely difficult to stay focused and determined. Motivation is always the source of inspiration and incentive to do something mirthfully or oftentimes with least effort even if it is very difficult or when everything seems to fail.  

But what if the person still failed in accomplishing his or her preset goals? 

That is still success because all the small and big efforts devoted toward it are never wasted. Remember that a person who failed in his or her goals may still become the trailblazer, the pioneer, the innovator, the groundbreaker, or simply a model, an inspiration or example for others to emulate.

Certainly, a purpose-driven life would never lead to failure regardless of its outcome.

Life’s journey starts with a dream. As they say, it’s the only thing that is free nowadays. And there’s actually no limit to what we want to dream about.

To realize a dream, most people find the need to device a plan or a strategy, consisting of short-term or even long-term goals or activities. Others would go about their dreams by just leaving things to fate but this is the surer path to lose in life by default. Dreams would have better chances of fruition when we consciously and actively pursue them through our actions. But regardless of our individual preference, our dreams always set the expectation of our journey.

Our expectations fail because of our failure to act, or maybe because we took the wrong path when we are called upon to make our choices. For some, the experience is bitter. For others, the experience is a misery, if not a tragedy. But others would just rise to the occasion and take up failure simply as a challenge to do more and better.

Our expectations also fail because of circumstances beyond our control, or maybe because we are not gifted with the talents to make our expectations work. Oftentimes, unforeseen events make us helpless or even discourage us from moving on in our journey. Human limitations as reason for failed expectations though is more apparent than real and have become a convenient excuse for failing. This world is replete with individuals who were born to fail because of their innate physical disabilities but nevertheless conquered their own dreams that normal human beings would find extremely difficult to do.

Whatever is the real reason for our failed expectations, I believe that the most important thing is to give and do our best all the time in the pursuit of our dreams. In the end, when our expectations are not met, we can ask ‘what happened?’ or ‘why it happened?’ if only to learn, or for other travelers to learn, from our mistakes and our frustrating experience. 

But when the bad weather comes to pass, the most difficult and critical part of the process is acceptance. How we accept things as they are and that not everything works according to our liking, our plans, or our expectations define our personal triumph or our personal doom. Losers can still be victors if they know how to rise up to the occasion. Acceptance is the key. And needless to say, the process of acceptance is never complete unless there is either remorse or forgiveness or both, when the situation calls for it.

We have to believe that bad things happen for some good reasons, albeit incomprehensible at the time we perceived defeat. I personally believe that failure is always a blessing in disguise but we will never know unless we recognize it ourselves.

Life is journey because we have to keep moving until we reach our final destination. And if things don’t work according to our expectations, we have to make a conscious effort to accept things as they are, and start dreaming again and again, if necessary. It is never too late to start a journey over and over again because there is always hope for as long we live, and this fact we must accept as a basic premise.