How To Define Success: "Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm"

What is success? What does it look like? 

Sir Winston Churchill

Before we start, the above quote is meant to be from Churchill. I can imagine your mother rolling her eyes at seeing this quote because I used to quote Churchill all the time. 

I just watched an amazing film that really got me thinking about what success is and how your life may be shaped by the idea of it. 

As a baby, your initial ‘successes’ will be getting your needs met to survive. You’ll cry to be warmed, fed, changed. But as you get older it will be to crawl, not get caught drawing on the walls, pulling the dogs ears, or hiding your sick between the sofa cushions. As a teenager and adult, your ideas of success will also evolve. 

I have failed in every aspect of life more times that I can count. I don’t know many people who have been completely successful without failing. I’m sure that even those people who seem to have it all have had multiple failures and are hiding pain and struggles. This is life and nobody gets out without a scar. In fact, I would worry about someone who has never failed because I’m not sure they would be resilient enough to deal with it. To me, failure calcifies the mind and breeds success. 

I’ve failed exams, lost you, your mother and brother, lost at sports, haven’t achieved some aims, etc. Every time I have failed I have had to move on, recalibrate, rearm and move on to the next failure. I suppose life moves on regardless, so you have no choice but to get up and go again.  Each of my failures have taught me valuable lessons that I learnt late in life (opsimath dad) and I hope to pass some on to you. 

Failure is defined as a lack of success; but what is success? The dictionary says that success is:

“The accomplishment of an aim or purpose”.

I don’t think it matters about what the aim or purpose is. The most important thing is to know the difference between whether they are your own aims or purposes or someone else’s, and what is motivating them. 

I honestly think I’ve struggled with this my whole life. Looking back, the majority of the ideas I had around “success” came from my family, friends, school, sports, media. This means that I have felt hurt, saddened, embarrassed and lost by failing to achieve the aims of someone else. 

Some of the ideas of success I inherited were:

“Be a manager”; “Be like your grandfather”; “Go to the RAF”; “Be a champion”; “Get married”; “Earn over £50,000”; “Be an alpha”; “Be the hardest”; “Be the best”; “Be the man every girl wants”; “Have a six pack”; “Go travelling”.

I tried for years to be some of these things, and whilst I’m naturally some of them, I also struggled with others. This meant that I was trying to be someone or something that someone else had created in their mind, and I was ‘failing’ at it. It really doesn’t make sense.

Since your mother and I decided to split, I reflected hard on the idea of success.

It's easy to see how the rest of the aims or purposes listed in the box above are absolute rubbish. I’ll give you some examples from the lives of both me and your mother to highlight this, (I hope she doesn’t mind).

Your mother was frowned upon for wanting to go and study whilst your brother was young because others thought her aim and purpose was to be a stay-at-home mother. But think about it, that was their ideas of success, not your mothers. Your mother followed her beliefs and is now an incredible mother with a fantastic career who can provide for her family more than she ever would have been able to. So, this shows that even when others don’t agree, we should still follow our own thoughts, beliefs and convictions - if they are good natured. That doesn’t mean however, that you can be bigoted or arrogant. You should always find people to challenge your ideas and help you think things through. Always challenge your perceptions and grow as a person.

Both your mother and I were overly concerned about how we looked. The way your mother looked was the least important and least interesting thing about her (even though she was stunning). She was caring, funny, articulate, intelligent, protective, and more. She could have been burnt in a fire or become clinically obese and close to death and I still would have loved her all the same. The ‘fear’ your mother and I felt in relation to the way we looked probably came from society. I can honestly say that I wished I had realised this earlier and focussed on having her fancy and love me for who i was. It's a shame that the catankorous side of me took over towards the end as it probably stopped her caring. But ultimately, I was so concerned about what I portrayed to the world that I forgot what I projected onto the world. 

The reality is that no one is going to care about anything other than how you made them feel, how funny you were, how caring, helpful, loyal, etc. The list above is what I’ll call ‘toxic ideas of success’. Now I’ve realised this, I have grown a beard and trained my belly to overhang my trousers by eating my head off. It’s the only time in my life I’ve been chuffed with a dad body. I think the slugs I share my shed with approve as they keep climbing onto my back at night. No joke, I have pictures. 

Growing up, some of these ideas of success made me fight against my dad because he knew he had to hold a tight rein on me and push me. Then, during a night shift, someone once told me that if I tried to emulate parts of my dad, I too would be successful. Those words have been stuck with me ever since and I have tried my best to embed the positive qualities that make my dad successful (in my eyes). 

This makes me think that you may also want to be a bit like me, or want nothing to do with me - and this, along with your mother and brother has motivated me to make the changes that I needed. But if you chose to be anything like me, please take the things that matter.- like how deep I love; how protective and loyal I am; how I will do anything for anyone; how kind, funny, thoughtful I am. 

Our ideas of success will also change over time. What I thought would be an indication of ‘success’ as a younger version of me, is completely different to the versions I currently hold. If I went by…

• Boxing champion 
• Rugby player 
• Business Manager 
• Earning £50,000 a year
• Have a happy wife who loved me

…then I would be classed as a failure. I think it's because these are based on what I thought success was, rather than what I believed success was. 

The sad thing is that I got caught up in these ideas and let them overrule what I believed success to be. 

Im going to tell you a little story of what I believe success is and how I came to it:

Years ago I visited Krakow in Poland. Your mother actually went there long before I met her too. 

I visited the concentration camps and explored the city. One day, I went to the Oscar Schindler factory and it changed my life. Walking through the museum I could see all the sacrifices that were made to save the lives of hundreds of people from the Nazis. Their stories were brought to life in the chilling exhibition. Then, when I came to the end of the tour, I walked into a room where there were portraits of the individuals that Schindler was able to save. I looked them in the eyes and I cried. Next to these photos was a quote:

Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire

And there, right in front of my eyes, was my idea of success: If you can help just one person live a better life, then you may also help their children’s children to live better lives. In short, leave the world a better place than you found it. I therefore decided to use my degree to not only help myself, but to help children for years.

I think it's important to know how helpful failure is going to be in your life. It will help you grow as a person and it will help you understand what it is you believe in, how hard you will work for it, and how you will define success. You will add and remove certain ‘success’ parameters across your life span. For example, I have recently added to my list:

• To be a good father to you and your brother; and,
• To be someone you are proud of

So, what can you learn from this?

• Find what you’re passionate about and what you think resonates with your own ideas of success, not someone else’s. 
• Don't focus too much on what you physically portray to the world. Instead, take time projecting your good qualities out to the world.
• Know when to pursue your goal or ambition and when to give up. It's ok to really push for a goal and to achieve your ambition. But it will also be important to know when to draw a line underneath something and not look back. I know this is hypercritical as I will always try to be with you and your brother. But there will be a time when you need to realise that no matter how much time and energy you put into something, it's over.
• Your ideas of success will change over time and that’s ok. 
• Success comes in many forms, it could be walking to the top of a big hill, using the potty for the first time, or getting a job. It's not always about the big things .
• Life is story - with good chapters and bad chapters. This is my life philosophy and we will talk about this soon. Just watch any action film, its always full of adversity, mistakes and people dying before the hero goes on a psychological journey, develops and grows and saves the day. Star Wars, Kingsmen, The Hunger Games, Harry Potter are all films that show this.
• I will guide you but not pressure you. the choices we make dictate the life that we lead - and you know this
• Don’t be pressured by the ideas of what it is to be a man, woman; whichever surname you feel closest to, or what your friends and family say are ‘cool’. Don’t think you have to emulate anyones story or success, and don’t feel like you have to be different either. Do what you feel and think is best for you. Write your own story. 
• Pick a positive role model. Not these fake instagram ‘stars’, YouTubers or people wrapped up in cotton wool. Don’t take inspiration from drug dealers and ‘rappers’ who are surrounded by cars and women that they hired for the day, whilst wearing their nanna’s old fashioned coat that they claim is mink fur but is fake and smells of death and mould - choose real people like your mother, her aunty, your brother, or my mother and father; teachers; engineers; doctors- people who make the world a better place for being in it.
• If you love them and you’re proud of them, tell them. 
• There is absolutely no rush to get it right straight away, just do what Churchill says and go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm. I'll be with you every step of the way. 
• If you believe in it, train hard for it, work hard at it, and then you’ll enjoy it. 
• Try to be a better version of yourself today, compared to yesterday.

I will leave you with this:

I love you,

Dad