“My failures have been errors in judgment, not of intent.”
-Ulysses S. Grant
Failure is as much a part of life as success; they live within a beautiful, symbiotic relationship as much a part of the world as an up and a down. The very fact that the word success is even definable is because the word failure sits at its doorstep. In life it’s inevitable to experience as much failure as you do success, where I think most people get the wrong idea is that success should be determined by an end product as opposed to its by products that came from our original intent. Success means so much more than arriving at a desired end point, it means having the courage to even take the first steps towards a point. The Lao Tzu put it beautifully when it stated that “A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.” If we can wrap our minds around this simple concept then the act of living a successful life will be easier to manifest.
Like everything else in life, success is determined by the measuring stick we use to define it. In my life I have suffered many defeats, defeats of character, in sports, as a writer, as a philosopher, as a friend, and in a more general sense as a human being. But when I started to look deeper into these failures that have crept into my life, I started to have my eyes opened to the fact that these were not failures because I thought they were, they were failures because I let others give them that definition. You must be very careful about letting others define your efforts, for other people have no idea the reason for any of your attempts. The part of success and failure that I find most interesting is the intent that goes before the actions are taken. Why give anyone else the ability to define your life for you, when it’s so much more fun living out your definition for yourself and letting your life be an evolving definition that speaks for the success itself?
Behind every action we take is the intent for the action. Behind every choice we make is a motivation inside of us for making that choice. When the world judges our actions it so often doesn't have enough knowledge of our intent to make a proper judgment, so don’t sweat the outcome of things as much as you take stock in the action itself.
Let’s say you have a friend who is in love with their significant other, and you catch that significant other cheating on your friend. You know it will devastate your friend if you tell him/her, and it might even end your friendship with that person because they might not believe you. You decide to tell your friend what you saw anyways because your intent is to be a loving person who doesn't want to hide the truth. Upon telling them the news of betrayal your friend gets angry and decides not to believe you. Even further than not believing you your friend decides to no longer be friends with you. The outcome of this decision would appear a failure to the outside world but in your eyes it was a success because you feel at peace with the decision and you did what you thought was right. Your intent was pure in this matter so the end result is not what was important; it was the journey of being a loving friend that was a success. You can see in just this one, simple scenario, how intent is what should be valued over the perceived failure in an outcome.
I’ll give you another example where your intent can be the reason for failure or success. In the same scenario from above if you take a slightly different vantage point you can see how failure is born. Let’s say you saw your friend’s significant other cheating and you decide that it’s better to let your friend find out on their own because he/she needs to be taught a lesson about not trusting people; despite not wanting this to be the case for you in the same situation. Your intent is to have life teach someone else a lesson that’s not rooted in love, and thus the failure takes root. Your friend inevitably finds out that he/she is being cheated on and consequently finds out that you knew all along. This knowing leads to he/she ending your friendship on entirely different grounds, entirely warranted grounds, for you can no longer be trusted as an honest person. Same end result, a lost friendship, a failure by the world’s eyes. But because of the intent you entered into the scenario with you have no sense of success; you failed miserably at being a good friend.
In both scenarios you can see how the intent of the person is what comes into question, and in both scenarios you can see how the outcome can either be one of harmony born from intent or one of disharmony bred from intent.
On the great walk of life the only real judge of success can be your intent on living. If you make your way through life poor and unwanted in the eyes of man, but your intent in life was to be a pure spirit with pure intentions and you chose accordingly, which only lead to the end result of lack in the material sense, I see you as a success. On the flip side, if you die very wealthy and powerful because your intent in life was to exploit others for the building up of your own ends, then I see you as a failure. The acquisition of wealth is neutral, it's only paper, the manner in which it's acquired is what someone can be deemed a failure or success by.
We are all born naked and without a single object to our names, and we all die the same way, for we can’t carry anything with us past the grave.
If your intent on anything you do is pure then failure is not an option worth exploring, for your intent is the primary ingredient of success regardless the outcome. Your intent is all that you have to warrant any decision you make in life; pure intentions are what separates the beast of man from the lamb of God. When your intentions are pure and righteous you will learn that the end result is not always what warrants the judgment of success or failure, but it was the journey itself that produced the success your life will be judged by.
I know this idea is rather ethereal and does not always produce the financial means which you might desire but it will produce the person you desire to be. In life when you know you are the person you want to be, all the gold in the world alter change this fact. But the man who does not know who he is cannot buy his wanted definition with any amount of gold. At the end of the day the person of pure intent will be happier and more fulfilled because intent is not for sale, it’s given freely, and we can’t go to the grave with gold but we can go to the grave with a pure heart and a pure mind.
Your intentions in a matter and not the outcome should be what define success in your life.
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