Setting up for Success

When a father's son reached a certain age, the father decided the son should go into business for himself. The father's idea for the son was to own and operate a lawn business. The father was gleeful at the idea and very much enamored with his vision for his son's launch into entrepreneurial success. This was not the son's passion...the outdoors, manual labor, hot sun...but as a good child will, the son put on his game face and shouldered this new responsibility and the several thousands of dollars in debt (real and psychological) which came with all the equipment and expectation.

Was the son set up for success?  No; not for the want of a generous benefactor, but for the mismatched ambitions. The son did not know the father was playing out his own psychic needs...and the father didn't know it either. The father did not know the son was being polite and dutiful, but was not sharing the vision. The resentment drove the wedge between them deeper. The son had been set up for failure. Not because he could not achieve his father's dream for him, but because the father had no right to assert his dream for his son.

Imagine you are growing a garden. A successful gardener amends the soil to support the nutrient needs of the plants. When the rains of heaven fall more scarcely, the gardener nourishes dry plants with life-sustaining water. A good gardener knows that some horseshit is going to be needed, but if it is applied at the wrong time, it will burn the tender greens. Even the very best rose fertilizer that money can buy will kill an African violet.

Success is measured very individually. Knowing what success means to you is critical to embodying it. Advertisers spend huge money telling you what success means: Money, Luxury, Adoration, Enviability, More! Bigger! But if these things don't turn you on, you won't be happy with success measured with those yardsticks. The yardsticks you are looking for measure down deep into your soul, into your heart. You can set yourself up for success by tapping deep down into that True Measure of success for you as an individual. And by realizing that success is so individual, you find that you can easily set others up for success by learning what success means to them and then offering assistance. Help is only help if it is help.

For the son of a father, and for any of us who have "failed", it is worthwhile to consider that if success is individual then so must be failure. You may loose money, property, customers -- you may lose everything. Ideas may fail, even whole dreams may collapse on you. That fire that scourged through all your underbrush may have been needed to clear some paths and make light and nutrients available for new growth. When your roots are deep your success is much more likely.