7 Steps to Change Your Point of View on Success
Originally published on July 1, 2013 on 7MTJ - 7 Mindset Tips Journal
This is a very old blog post that comes from my first blog in 2013. Nostalgia made me put it back here.
“What are your past successes?”
Having recently interviewed some applicants for internships and jobs, I had the wonderful opportunity to ask them about the meaning they gave to the words success, failure, victory, and defeat. Beyond the dictionary description, it helped me understand what the implicit social definition of success is, and how society (or part of it) was shaped by it.
Most of the answers for success or victory could be summed up as follows: “an experience when objectives are defined beforehand, either by you or by someone else, and for which you matched these objectives through voluntary actions.”
Emotionally speaking, success is associated with positive emotions—mostly satisfaction, joy, and sense of achievement—while failure is often associated with disappointment, frustration, and pain.
Attitude Towards Success
From the previous definition, and the supposed duality between failure and success, we can either keep our lives very judgmental and suffer from it, being dependent on rewards and recognition, OR try the following steps in understanding more deeply the essence of victory and defeat.
The 7 Steps
1. Understand the Backfire Effect
Successes can generate loads of failures, and failures can generate loads of successes. Here are some personal examples (for education, but I am sure everybody has many more examples):
Example of Success Leading to Problems:
- During all my childhood and even as a teen, I had good grades in school without substantial effort, topping the class in most subjects. This success brought me compliments from everyone. However, I became dependent on compliments and forgot the meaning of succeeding for myself. I grew up with pride and arrogance, and I am still trying to overcome it today.
Example of Failure Leading to Growth:
- When arriving in preparatory classes in Louis-Le-Grand (considered prestigious in France), I went from top to bottom in grade rankings. Yet, I figured out how humble one needs to be in order to carry on in challenging situations, and also I learned to admire my peers, and to be inspired by more brilliant people.
Example of Perceived Failure Becoming Success:
- I was accepted to ENSTA Paristech, which was below the standards of my preparatory class teacher’s expectations. On top of that, ENSTA is less known by non-engineering people than big names like École Polytechnique or École des Ponts (which I had targeted). However, my initial arrogant disappointment quickly turned into realization that I needed more than a school name to get a good job. It gave me strength to engage in several non-profit experiences, which helped me substantially later on.
The story continues with ups that were not really ups and downs that were not really downs. Even though the short story above is mainly about pride and humility, many other factors can emerge at the last minute to turn a victory into failure, and vice versa.
2. Accept the Core Neutrality of the Past
Without a good understanding of the present, you have no real way to measure the past: Was it useful? Was it harmful? There is no final answer to it, as the present is your utility measurement tool.
3. Choose What to Do With It
It is up to you to make events of your past burdens or springboards. You have full power of interpretation of events that happened a year, a month, or a minute ago. Either the concept of success/defeat is flawed, or it is totally unimportant when considering your path towards your ideals.
4. For Future Situations: Expect Both, but Mostly “Start as Failure, Finish as Success, Then Question the Effects”
You now know how to handle your path, but what about the future? What should you expect? Mostly, as situations we encounter become more and more complex and as our anticipation power is limited, you can expect more “failures” (meaning not exactly matching the objectives defined beforehand) proportionally.
Yet, there should be no heavy emotional burden from failure occurrences, simply because once you master the interpretation, you can turn them into successes (check first 3 points). Then, be wary of wrong consequences of success (pride, laziness, etc.).
5. Figure Out That It Ultimately Does Not Influence the Course of Your Actions
With practice, as you interpret everything dynamically to make the best use of it, you figure out that no matter the turn of an event in comparison with initial objectives, your mind will extract its best. At this point, you figure out the key is attitude, not result—it is traveling well, not the destination.
6. After Some Practice, Leave the Concepts of Victory and Defeat Behind
I will start by quoting Rudyard Kipling in “If”: “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster, And treat those two impostors just the same,” then your focus will be freed from these motivational tools for beginners (which I still use, because I’m still a beginner).
This is the point where you become the spirit of your actions, instead of being subject to the occurrence of external outcomes.
7. Apply to Everyday Situations
After the previous concept is understood, you can then figure out that “best effort” spirit applies to every life field, from love life to professional success, to wealth and poverty, through serious and casual pursuits.
Just practice the first 6 steps now with any of your experiences. With some mental effort, you’ll figure out it’s easy, obvious, and that REAL success spirit is within your reach!
Conclusion
This framework transforms our relationship with success and failure from a rigid, outcome-dependent mindset to a dynamic, growth-oriented approach. The key insight is that our interpretation of events has more power over our well-being and progress than the events themselves.
By mastering this dynamic interpretation, we free ourselves from the emotional rollercoaster of external validation and instead focus on the quality of our effort and attitude—the only things truly within our control.
Have a smiling day!