Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Measures of Success - The Problem

So after having multiple conversations over the past few days regarding success I am convinced that this is a great conversation that needs to continue for me. There are people that don't want to have any measure of success. They are happy to show up and let life happen around them. I'll tell you, I want my doctor to have measures of success. Like a zero death rate. I want the people that cook my food to have a measure of success. Like no hospitalizations. I want people to measure success and I bet you do too.

I'm not sure exactly why people shy away from defining success because I'm not one of them. I know that when you put some kind of goal out there that you can measure it can become scary because you might not reach it. And we are a culture that deifies those that reach high levels of success and we marginalize those that don't.

I really don't think there is a good argument in most areas of life not to have some kind of idea, however vague, of what success looks like. But I do understand the fear of setting yourself up for failure.

On the other hand I have seen people so driven by achieving their success that they leave a wake of relational destruction that makes any achievement of goals hollow and empty. How many broken lives have we seen and how many times have we heard the stories of people at the top losing it all, their family, their friends, their health.

So the problem to me is where do you find the balance and how do you actually define success? What does it look like in your family? In your finances? In your friendships? In your career?

I think this might be the key... Not how others have defined success. How do you define it?

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