The Danger Of Perfectionist Thinking
Like many, you may feel your success is a sort of mystical faraway kingdom which you have hazy doubts if it could be an achievable destination or it’s just a fantasy. Many of us think only the shiny people in the world get to belong to this success and leadership club. With two decades of experience helping leaders, professionals and graduates attain their success, and I can tell you one thing with certainty about your success. Your success is very real, and it is sitting inside you right now. It is your potential. Whether you are 18 or 80, your potential is what carries you into a bright, fulfilling future. Your potential is that ache you can’t ignore, which is telling you that you have so much more to bring out from inside. It is that passion you know how free you will feel when you pursue your dream. It is that deep sense of knowing that this purpose will enable you to express all that you truly are.
Teachers and all those who support people in their growth get to see the world of people in pursuit of success in a very different way to what many would see. We get to see people wanting to grow but don’t believe they can, so they stay where they are because it is safe there. They believe they have to be the perfect polished student, the perfect shiny leader, the perfect popular employee to step out. No matter what level of the ladder you are at, it is normal to feel that way because we were never taught to be ourselves. Personally, I sometimes wonder if we have devolved into something akin to the suffocating Victorian era where social expectations were at there prime, but that is another topic.
The Secret To Success Is Failure
When we give ourselves the grace and acceptance to not look great, to fail is when we succeed. Michal Jordan famously said. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life, and that is why I succeed. The key to success is failure. Even though the world shows us images of success, we rarely see the failures and hard work that built that success. We compare ourselves against these shiny lives and look at their success as this final destination that we never reached and somehow are less whole because of it.
You Dont Have To See The Whole Stairway, Just Take The First Step
In the title above, quoted by Martin Luther King, real change and success is not about being able to see the whole road ahead, its about taking the first step. Our success journey is made up of lots of small steps, detours, roadblocks, and sometimes broken roads. However, in the end, it is about you being all that you are. I have found my greatest pains have been my greatest lessons of strength, love and compassion. I have found some journeys may not have taken me to where I wanted to be, but they ultimately put me on a better route in the end. The journey is what made me a better person, not the destination. Success is not a destination, it is the freedom to express who you are and become everything that you are. Our journeys provide us the platform for us to do that.