True Measure Of Success Quotes

The true measure of success is how many times you can bounce back from failure.

It is impossible to escape the impression that people commonly use false standards of measurement — that they seek power, success and wealth for themselves and admire them in others, and that they underestimate what is of true value in life.

Get Off The Scale! You are beautiful. Your beauty, just like your capacity for life, happiness, and success, is immeasurable. Day after day, countless people across the globe get on a scale in search of validation of beauty and social acceptance. Get off the scale! I have yet to see a scale that can tell you how enchanting your eyes are. I have yet to see a scale that can show you how wonderful your hair looks when the sun shines its glorious rays on it. I have yet to see a scale that can thank you for your compassion, sense of humor, and contagious smile. Get off the scale because I have yet to see one that can admire you for your perseverance when challenged in life. It’s true, the scale can only give you a numerical reflection of your relationship with gravity. That’s it. It cannot measure beauty, talent, purpose, life force, possibility, strength, or love. Don’t give the scale more power than it has earned. Take note of the number, then get off the scale and live your life. You are beautiful!

The most treasured and sacred moments of our lives are those filled with the spirit of love. The greater the measure of our love, the greater is our joy. In the end, the development of such love is the true measure of success in life.

We’ve bought into the idea that education is about training and “success”, defined monetarily, rather than learning to think critically and to challenge. We should not forget that the true purpose of education is to make minds, not careers. A culture that does not grasp the vital interplay between morality and power, which mistakes management techniques for wisdom, which fails to understand that the measure of a civilization is its compassion, not its speed or ability to consume, condemns itself to death.

As Samuel Johnson purportedly wrote, “The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.

. . . But experience has taught me that you cannot value dreams according to the odds of their coming true. Their real value is in stirring within us the will to aspire. That will, wherever it finally leads, does at least move you forward. And after a time you may recognize that the proper measure of success is not how much you've closed the distance to some far-off goal but the quality of what you've done today.

The true measure of a man is not what he dreams, but what he aspires to be; a dream is nothing without action. Whether one fails or succeeds is irrelevant; all that matters is that there was motion in his life. That alone affects the world.

Success is not money, cars, fame or material possessions but the lives you touched positively.

There is only one measure of true success, child. How close you remain by His side. Does the dust of His feet get on your cloak because you follow so close? Does the sound of His whisper reverberate in your ear because you have drawn so near? Are you obedient to that voice, day after day, hour after hour? That’s how I measure success. Do you understand?

If you are a leader, the true measure of your success is not getting people to work. It’s not getting people to work hard. It is getting people to work hard together. That takes commitment.

This country is founded on some very noble ideals but also some very big lies. One is that everyone has a fair chance at success. Another is that rich people have to be smart and hardworking or else they would´t be rich. Another is that if you´re not rich, don´t worry about it, because rich people aren´t really happy. I am the white male living proof that all of that is garbage. The vast degree to which my mental health improved once I had the smallest measure of economic security immediately unmasked this shameful fiction to me. Money cannot buy happiness, but it buys the conditions for happiness: time, occasional freedom from constantly worry, a moment of breath to plan for the future, and the ability to be generous.

It is easy to be judged a success when luck runs with the fortunate son. But when adversity strikes, the true measure of a man percolates to the surface.

The True measure of a person’s success is to be a person of value.’ I knew people of value, people who kept their promises, people who were kind, people who were loyal.

he necessarily must until weakness is overcome), the strength of character gained will be the measure of his true success, and this will form a new starting-point for future power and triumph.

The true measure of success is to make sure everything I do—the way I act, the way I treat others, the way I deal with disappointment and setbacks—reflects and glorifies God.

The only true measure of success is the ratio between what we might have done and what we might have been on the one hand, and the thing we have made and the things we have made of ourselves on the other.

8. And finally, of course, the very central teaching of the Gita: “Let go of the outcome.” Let go of any clinging to how this all comes out. You cannot measure your actions at this point by the conventional wisdom about success and failure.

The true measure of your success is the degree to which within you are truly content - and the depth to which others hold you with real love and respect

The true measure of a person’s character is how one handles one’s failures, not successes.

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.

Not all who demand your attention desire your happiness, many merely seeking a conveyance to their own. It is entirely easy when wrapped up with the petty to miss what is possible and what rows your ship to worthwhile dreams. But when two or more fall together to share the oars of what might be, dreams may find them in equal measure and as fast as the wake made.

True success is not measured by how much you have achieved but by how many times you've failed

What are the assumptions that have to prove true in order for me to be able to succeed in this assignment?

After all is said and done, I believe the true measure of success is how many times you can bounce back from failure.

You'll never see a U-Haul behind a hearse,' Denzel Washington often said as we worked together on 'Fences.' 'I don't care how much money you have or what level of notoriety you've achieved, you can't take any of it with you.' There is a cap on earthly success, a ceiling on the amount of joy that possessions and awards can bring before disillusionment sets in. Our appearance, our prosperity, the applause: all of it is so fleeting. But a life of true significance has unlimited impact. It is measured in how well we've loved those around us, how much we've given away, how many seeds we've sown along our path. During her ninety-six years, Ms. [Cicely] Tyson has discovered the potent elixir: she has lived a life of that is bigger than she is, an existence grounded in purpose and flourishing in service to others. That is her defining masterpiece. That is her enduring gift to us all. [Viola Davis, Foreword]

there is still a kind of unique loneliness to child rearing for women. We so often do it in isolation. Add to the fact that in our competitive, perfectionist culture, in which the price woman are required to pay for freedom still seems to be martyrdom, almost everyone lies about motherhood. Part of that lying is loyalty - I can't let on that my kid is the only one on the playground who can't read or play the piano - and part of it is self-protection, since we've made hyper-motherhood a measure of female success. The preferred answer to the question "How are you?" is always "Fine," and the answer to the question "How are the kids?" is supposed to be "Great!" That's true even if the accurate answers would be "terrible" and "a mess." I think it produces its own kind of desperation, especially for women, who yearn to be emotionally open.

There is only one measure of true success, child. How close you remain by His side. Does the dust of His feet get on your cloak because you follow so close? Does the sound of His whisper reverberate in your ear because you have drawn so near? Are you obedient to that voice, day after day, hour after hour? That’s how I measure success.

They do well, even excellently, in everything they undertake; they are admired and envied; they are successful whenever they care to be—but behind all this lurks depression, a feeling of emptiness and self-alienation, and a sense that their life has no meaning. These dark feelings will come to the fore as soon as the drug of grandiosity fails, as soon as they are not “on top,” not definitely the “superstar,” or whenever they suddenly get the feeling they have failed to live up to some ideal image or have not measured up to some standard. Then they are plagued by anxiety or deep feelings of guilt and shame. What are the reasons for such disturbances in these competent, accomplished people?

Novelist H. G. Wells held that wealth, notoriety, place, and power are no measures of success whatsoever. The only true measure of success is the ratio between what we might have been and what we have become. In other words, success comes as the result of growing to our potential.

Glossa Time goes by, time comes along, All is old and all is new; What is right and what is wrong, You must think and ask of you; Have no hope and have no fear, Waves that rise can never hold; If they urge or if they cheer, You remain aloof and cold. To our sight a lot will glisten, Many sounds will reach our ear; Who could take the time to listen And remember all we hear? Keep aside from all that patter, Seek yourself, far from the throng When with loud and idle clatter Time goes by, time comes along. Nor forget the tongue of reason Or its even scales depress When the moment, changing season, Wears the mask of happiness - It is born of reason's slumber And may last a wink as true: For the one who knows its number All is old and all is new. Be as to a play, spectator, As the world unfolds before: You will know the heart of matter Should they act two parts or four; When they cry or tear asunder From your seat enjoy along And you'll learn from art to wonder What is right and what is wrong. Past and future, ever blending, Are the twin sides of same page: New start will begin with ending When you know to learn from age; All that was or be tomorrow We have in the present, too; But what's vain and futile sorrow You must think and ask of you; For the living cannot sever From the means we've always had: Now, as years ago, and ever, Men are happy or are sad: Other masks, same play repeated; Diff'rent tongues, same words to hear; Of your dreams so often cheated, Have no hope and have no fear. Hope not when the villains cluster By success and glory drawn: Fools with perfect lack of luster Will outshine Hyperion! Fear it not, they'll push each other To reach higher in the fold, Do not side with them as brother, Waves that rise can never hold. Sounds of siren songs call steady Toward golden nets, astray; Life attracts you into eddies To change actors in the play; Steal aside from crowd and bustle, Do not look, seem not to hear From your path, away from hustle, If they urge or if they cheer; If they reach for you, go faster, Hold your tongue when slanders yell; Your advice they cannot master, Don't you know their measure well? Let them talk and let them chatter, Let all go past, young and old; Unattached to man or matter, You remain aloof and cold. You remain aloof and cold If they urge or if they cheer; Waves that rise can never hold, Have no hope and have no fear; You must think and ask of you What is right and what is wrong; All is old and all is new, Time goes by, time comes along.

It is easy to be a virtuous man in good times. It is easy to be judged a success when luck runs with the fortunate son. But when adversity strikes, the true measure of a man percolates to the surface. That is why combat became the great sifter--it tested our mettle. Not once but again and again...

A man should conceive of a legitimate purpose in his heart, and set out to accomplish it. He should make this purpose the centralizing point of his thoughts. It may take the form of a spiritual ideal, or it may be a worldly object, according to his nature at the time being; but whichever it is, he should steadily focus his thought-forces upon the object, which he has set before him. He should make this purpose his supreme duty, and should devote himself to its attainment, not allowing his thoughts to wander away into ephemeral fancies, longings, and imaginings. This is the royal road to self-control and true concentration of thought. Even if he fails again and again to accomplish his purpose (as he necessarily must until weakness is overcome), the strength of character gained will be the measure of his true success, and this will form a new starting-point for future power and triumph.

Don't allow one setback to define you. Your true self is beyond measure. Success is a marathon, not a sprint. Move on to where you flourish.

Instead of measuring my success and value by my own standards, I was measuring it by how others perceived me.

You take whatever victories you find in this game, and you measure success in the smallest of increments.

Abraham Lincoln was not, in the fullest sense of the word, either our man or our model. In his interests, in his associations, in his habits of thought, and in his prejudices, he was a white man. [...] Any man can say things that are true of Abraham Lincoln, but no man can say anything that is new of Abraham Lincoln. His personal traits and public acts are better known to the American people than are those of any other man of his age. He was a mystery to no man who saw him and heard him. Though high in position, the humblest could approach him and feel at home in his presence. Though deep, he was transparent; though strong, he was gentle; though decided and pronounced in his convictions, he was tolerant towards those who differed from him, and patient under reproaches. [...] I have said that President Lincoln was a white man, and shared the prejudices common to his countrymen towards the colored race. Looking back to his times and to the condition of his country, we are compelled to admit that this unfriendly feeling on his part may be safely set down as one element of his wonderful success in organizing the loyal American people for the tremendous conflict before them, and bringing them safely through that conflict. His great mission was to accomplish two things: first, to save his country from dismemberment and ruin; and, second, to free his country from the great crime of slavery. To do one or the other, or both, he must have the earnest sympathy and the powerful cooperation of his loyal fellow-countrymen. Without this primary and essential condition to success his efforts must have been vain and utterly fruitless.[...] Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined. Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln. Delivered at the Unveiling of The Freedmen’s Monument in Lincoln Park, Washington, D.C.

The humble are the strongest. They don’t make decisions by sticking their fingers in the air … They know who they are. Their lives are not consumed by trying to please and impress others.

Each being is, exactly as you are, the sole centre of a Universe in no wise identical with, or even assimilable to, your own. The impersonal Universe of Nature is only an abstraction, approximately true, of the factors which it is convenient to regard as common to all. The Universe of another is therefore necessarily unknown to, and unknowable by, you; but it induces currents of energy in yours by determining in part your reactions. Use men and women, therefore, with the absolute respect due to inviolable standards of measurement; verify your own observations by comparison with similar judgements made by them; and, studying the methods which determine their failure or success, acquire for yourself the wit and skill required to cope with your own problems.

It is impossible to escape the impression that people commonly use false standards of measurement - that they seek power, success and wealth for themselves and admire them in others, and that they underestimate what is of true value in life. And yet, in making any general judgement of this sort, we are in danger of forgetting how variegated the human world and its mental life are.

It is easy to be a virtuous man in good times. It is easy to be judged a success when luck runs with the fortunate son. But when adversity strikes, the true measure of a man percolates to the surface

As we journey through life, true success isn’t measured by wealth or accolades, but by the impact we leave on others. When we uplift those around us, we create a legacy far greater than any personal achievement.

Did you know that true success is not measured solely by wealth or accomplishments, but also by the level of satisfaction and happiness you feel in life? Focus on finding joy and fulfillment in whatever you do, and success will naturally follow.

Morality and performance of duty are artificial measures that become necessary when something essential is lacking. The more successfully a person was denied access to his or her feelings in childhood, the larger the arsenal of intellectual weapons and the supply of moral prostheses has to be, because morality and a sense of duty are not sources of strength or fruitful soil for genuine affection. Blood does not flow in artificial limbs; they are for sale and can serve many masters. What was considered good yesterday can--depending on the decree of government or party--be considered evil and corrupt today, and vice versa. But those who have spontaneous feelings can only be themselves. They have no other choice if they want to remain true to themselves. Rejection, ostracism, loss of love, and name calling will not fail to affect them; they will suffer as a result and will dread them, but once they have found their authentic self they will not want to lose it. And when they sense that something is being demanded of them to which their whole being says no, they cannot do it. They simply cannot.

Plato's proposals in this matter are abhorrent to all true Christians. His intentions were, of course, excellent, for he desired the greatest possible improvement of the human race; but his good intentions led him to the proposal of measures which are necessarily unacceptable and repugnant to all those who adhere to Christian principles concerning the value of the human personality and the sanctity of human life. Moreover, it by no means follows that what has been found successful in the breeding of animals, will also prove successful when applied to the human race, for man has a rational soul which is not intrinsically dependent on matter but is directly created by Almighty God. Does a beautiful soul always go with a beautiful body or a good character with a strong body? Again, if such measures were successful — and what does "successful" mean in this connection? — in the case of the human race, it does not follow that the Government has the right to apply such measures. Those who to-day follow, or would like to follow, in the footsteps of Plato, advocating, e.g. compulsory sterilisation of the unfit, have not, be it remembered, Plato's excuse, that he lied at a period anterior to the presentation of the Christian ideals and principles. — 230

In the past few centuries economic rationality has een so successful that we have come to take for granted that the "bottom line" of any human effort is to be measured in dollars and cents. But an exclusively economic approach to life is profoundly irrational; the true bottom line consists in the quality and complexity of experience

Whuffie recaptured the true essence of money: in the old days, if you were broke but respected, you wouldn’t starve; contrariwise, if you were rich and hated, no sum could buy you security and peace. By measuring the thing that money really represented—your personal capital with your friends and neighbors—you more accurately gauged your success.

But even if we were entirely successful at eliminating inequalities of outcome associated with being born into wealth or privilege, the inequalities that remain would not be purged of luck. There would still be another type of luck lurking in the background: genes. This is true not only of standardized test performance and IQ scores. Even appealing to so-called “character” traits (grit, perseverance, resourcefulness, motivation, curiosity, or any other non-cognitive skill) doesn’t get you out of grappling with genetics. These traits, too, are shaped by genetic differences between people. There is no measure of so-called “merit” that is somehow free of genetic influence or untethered from biology.

I admit, however, my surprise when, many years later, I found myself living a life that was neither safe nor secure. I was stunned when, despite what I considered to be a life of sacrificial obedience, I could point to very little in my ministry that was “effective.” There were simply no results to measure. And success was a word that I would have never used to describe what I had done.

But experience has taught me that you cannot value dreams according to the odds of their coming true. Their real value is in stirring within us the will to aspire. That will, wherever it finally leads, does at least move you forward. And after a time you may recognize that the proper measure of success is not how much you’ve closed the distance to some far-off goal but the quality of what you’ve done today.

The problem with the self-esteem movement is that it measured self-esteem by how positively people felt about themselves. But a true and accurate measurement of one’s self-worth is how people feel about the negative aspects of themselves. If a person like Jimmy feels absolutely fucking great 99.9 percent of the time, despite his life falling apart around him, then how can that be a valid metric for a successful and happy life?

By any measure, Edison was a true genius, a towering figure in nineteenth-century innovation. But as the story of the lightbulb makes clear, we have historically misunderstood that genius. His greatest achievement may have been the way he figured out how to make teams creative: assembling diverse skills in a work environment that valued experimentation and accepted failure, incentivizing the group with financial rewards that were aligned with the overall success of the organization, and building on ideas that originated elsewhere.

Wherever I go in the West, I am struck by the great mental suffering that arises from the fear of dying, whether or not this fear is acknowledged. How reassuring it would be for people if they knew that when they lay dying they would be cared for with loving insight! As it is, our culture is so heartless in its expediency and its denial of any real spiritual value that people, when faced with terminal illness, feel terrified that they are simply going to be thrown away like useless goods. In Tibet it was a natural response to pray for the dying and to give them spiritual care; in the West the only spiritual attention that the majority pay to the dying is to go to their funeral. At the moment of their greatest vulnerability, then, people in our world are abandoned and left almost totally without support or insight. This is a tragic and humiliating state of affairs, which must change. All of the modern world’s pretensions to power and success will ring hollow until everyone can die in this culture with some measure of true peace, and until at least some effort is made to ensure this is possible. BY

To the enormous majority of persons who risk themselves in literature, not even the smallest measure of success can fall. They had better take to some other profession as quickly as may be, they are only making a sure thing of disappointment, only crowding the narrow gates of fortune and fame. Yet there are others to whom success, though easily within their reach, does not seem a thing to be grasped at. Of two such, the pathetic story may be read, in the Memoir of A Scotch Probationer, Mr. Thomas Davidson, who died young, an unplaced Minister of the United Presbyterian Church, in 1869. He died young, unaccepted by the world, unheard of, uncomplaining, soon after writing his latest song on the first grey hairs of the lady whom he loved. And she, Miss Alison Dunlop, died also, a year ago, leaving a little work newly published, Anent Old Edinburgh, in which is briefly told the story of her life. There can hardly be a true tale more brave and honourable, for those two were eminently qualified to shine, with a clear and modest radiance, in letters. Both had a touch of poetry, Mr. Davidson left a few genuine poems, both had humour, knowledge, patience, industry, and literary conscientiousness. No success came to them, they did not even seek it, though it was easily within the reach of their powers. Yet none can call them failures, leaving, as they did, the fragrance of honourable and uncomplaining lives, and such brief records of these as to delight, and console and encourage us all. They bequeath to us the spectacle of a real triumph far beyond the petty gains of money or of applause, the spectacle of lives made happy by literature, unvexed by notoriety, unfretted by envy. What we call success could never have yielded them so much, for the ways of authorship are dusty and stony, and the stones are only too handy for throwing at the few that, deservedly or undeservedly, make a name, and therewith about one-tenth of the wealth which is ungrudged to physicians, or barristers, or stock-brokers, or dentists, or electricians. If literature and occupation with letters were not its own reward, truly they who seem to succeed might envy those who fail. It is not wealth that they win, as fortunate men in other professions count wealth; it is not rank nor fashion that come to their call nor come to call on them. Their success is to be let dwell with their own fancies, or with the imaginations of others far greater than themselves; their success is this living in fantasy, a little remote from the hubbub and the contests of the world. At the best they will be vexed by curious eyes and idle tongues, at the best they will die not rich in this world’s goods, yet not unconsoled by the friendships which they win among men and women whose faces they will never see. They may well be content, and thrice content, with their lot, yet it is not a lot which should provoke envy, nor be coveted by ambition.

Early in this book, I said that the feeling I got from buying a Polish stock that went up ten times was the best thing to ever happen to me in my career. But the feeling I had on that balcony in Brussels with Sergei’s widow and son, as we watched the largest lawmaking body in Europe recognize and condemn the injustices suffered by Sergei and his family, felt orders of magnitude better than any financial success I’ve ever had. If finding a ten bagger in the stock market was a highlight of my life before, there is no feeling as satisfying as getting some measure of justice in a highly unjust world.

It is true that the success of the individual in his every-day business, profession, trade or other occupation depends very materially upon the possession of a good memory. His value in any walk in life depends to a great extent upon the degree of memory he may have developed. His memory of faces, names, facts, events, circumstances and other things concerning his every-day work is the measure of his ability to accomplish his task. And in the social intercourse of men and women, the possession of a retentive memory, well stocked with available facts, renders its possessor a desirable member of society.

Something might be true while being harmful and dangerous in the highest degree. Indeed, it might be a basic characteristic of existence that those who would know it completely would perish, in which case the strength of a spirit should be measured according to how much of the “truth” one could still barely endure—or to put it more clearly, to what degree one would require it to be thinned down, shrouded, sweetened, blunted, falsified. But there is no doubt at all that the evil and unhappy are more favored when it comes to the discovery of certain parts of truth, and that the probability of their success here is greater.

Why are the fundamental laws as we have described them? The ultimate theory must be consistent and must predict finite results for quantities that we can measure. We’ve seen that there must be a law like gravity, and we saw in Chapter 5 that for a theory of gravity to predict finite quantities, the theory must have what is called supersymmetry between the forces of nature and the matter on which they act. M-theory is the most general supersymmetric theory of gravity. For these reasons M-theory is the only candidate for a complete theory of the universe. If it is finite—and this has yet to be proved—it will be a model of a universe that creates itself. We must be part of this universe, because there is no other consistent model. M-theory is the unified theory Einstein was hoping to find. The fact that we human beings—who are ourselves mere collections of fundamental particles of nature—have been able to come this close to an understanding of the laws governing us and our universe is a great triumph. But perhaps the true miracle is that abstract considerations of logic lead to a unique theory that predicts and describes a vast universe full of the amazing variety that we see. If the theory is confirmed by observation, it will be the successful conclusion of a search going back more than 3,000 years. We will have found the grand design.

The whole suggestion is predicated on a damnable fucking lie—the BIG lie, actually—one which Richman himself happily helped create and which he works hard, on a daily basis, to keep alive. See … it makes for a better article when you associate the food with a personality. Richman, along with the best and worst of his peers, built up these names, helped make them celebrities by promoting the illusion that they cook—that if you walk into one of dozens of Jean-Georges’s restaurants, he’s somehow back there on the line, personally sweating over your halibut, measuring freshly chopped herbs between thumb and forefinger. Every time someone writes “Mr. Batali is fond of strong, assertive flavors” (however true that might be) or “Jean Georges has a way with herbs” and implies or suggests that it was Mr. Batali or Mr. Vongerichten who actually cooked the dish, it ignores the reality, if not the whole history, of command and control and the creative process in restaurant kitchens. While helpful to chefs, on the one hand, in that the Big Lie builds interest and helps create an identifiable brand, it also denies the truth of what is great about them: that there are plenty of great cooks in this world—but not that many great chefs. The word “chef” means “chief.” A chef is simply a cook who leads other cooks. That quality—leadership, the ability to successfully command, inspire, and delegate work to others—is the very essence of what chefs are about. As Richman knows. But it makes better reading (and easier writing) to first propagate a lie—then, later, react with entirely feigned outrage at the reality.

The fashion now is to think of universities as industries or businesses. University presidents, evidently thinking of themselves as CEO's, talk of "business plans" and "return on investment," as if the industrial economy could provide an aim and a critical standard appropriate either to education or to research. But this is not possible. No economy, industrial or otherwise, can supply an appropriate aim or standard. Any economy must be either true or false to the world and to our life in it. If it is to be true, then it must be made true, according to a standard that is not economic. To regard the economy as an end or as the measure of success is merely to reduce students, teachers, researchers, and all they know or learn to merchandise. It reduces knowledge to "property" and education to training for the "job market." If, on the contrary, [Sir Albert] Howard was right in his belief that health is the "one great subject," then a unifying aim and a common critical standard are clearly implied. Health is at once quantitative and qualitative; it requires both sufficiency and goodness. It is comprehensive (it is synonymous with "wholeness"), for it must leave nothing out. And it is uncompromisingly local and particular; it has to do with the sustenance of particular places, creatures, human bodies, and human minds. If a university began to assume responsibility for the health of its place and its local constituents, then all of its departments would have a common aim, and they would have to judge their place and themselves and one another by a common standard. They would need one another's knowledge. They would have to communicate with one another; the diversity of specialists would have to speak to one another in a common language. And here again Howard is exemplary, for he wrote, and presumably spoke, a plain, vigorous, forthright English-- no jargon, no condescension, no ostentation, no fooling around.

Probably every writer making a secondary world, a fantasy, every sub-creator, wishes in some measure to be a real maker, or hopes that he is drawing on reality: hopes that the peculiar quality of this secondary world (if not all the details) are derived from Reality, or are flowing into it. If he indeed achieves a quality that can fairly be described by the dictionary definition: "inner consistency of reality," it is difficult to conceive how this can be, if the work does not in some way partake of reality. The peculiar quality of the "joy" in successful Fantasy can thus be explained as a sudden glimpse of the underlying reality or truth. It is not only a "consolation" for the sorrow of this world, but a satisfaction, and an answer to that question, "Is it true?" The answer that I gave to that question at first was (quite rightly): "If you have built your little world well, yes: it is true in that world." That is enough for the artist (or the artist part of the artist). But in the "eucatastrophe" we see in a brief vision that the answer may be greater—it may be a far-off gleam or echo of evangelium in the real world.

[F]or a time of public need they thought that there was no man like him. During the peace while he was at the head of affairs he ruled with prudence; under his guidance Athens was safe, and reached the height of her greatness in his time. When the war began he showed that here too he had formed a true estimate of the Athenian power. He survived the commencement of hostilities two years and six months; and, after his death, his foresight was even better appreciated than during his life. For he had told the Athenians that if they would be patient and would attend to their navy, and not seek to enlarge their dominion while the war was going on, nor imperil the existence of the city, they would be victorious; but they did all that he told them not to do, and in matters which seemingly had nothing to do with the war, from motives of private ambition and private interest they adopted a policy which had disastrous effects in respect both of themselves and of their allies; their measures, had they been successful, would only have brought honour and profit to individuals, and, when unsuccessful, crippled the city in the conduct of the war. (Book 2 Chapter 65.4-7)

You could tell the quality of his thinking by what he chose to ask (questions being the true measure of a man), and after I successfully explained my thesis on symbiogenesis, we began conversing more openly and freely, and I got the chance to peer inside his head. He asked me if I’d heard of Turing’s oracle machines. In time, I have come to regard that simple question as a test. Luckily for me, I knew that Turing had written about oracle machines in his PhD thesis when he was just twenty-six years old: these were regular computers that worked, like all modern devices, following a precise set of sequential instructions. But Turing knew—from his study of Gödel and the halting problem—that all such devices would suffer from inescapable limitations, and that many problems would forever remain beyond their ability to solve. That weakness tortured the grandfather of computers: Turing longed for something different, a machine that could look beyond logic and behave in a manner more akin to humans, who possess not only intelligence but also intuition. So he dreamed up a computer capable of taking the machine equivalent of a wild guess: just like the Sibyl in her ecstatic drunkenness, his device would, at a certain point in its operations, make a nondeterministic leap.

Why Trump, many wondered, including many evangelicals themselves. For decades, the Religious Right had been kindling fear in the hearts of American Christians. It was a tried-and-true recipe for their own success. Communism, secular humanism, feminism, multilateralism, Islamic terrorism, and the erosion of religious freedom—evangelical leaders had rallied support by mobilizing followers to fight battles on which the fate of the nation, and their own families, seemed to hinge. Leaders of the Religious Right had been amping up their rhetoric over the course of the Obama administration. The first African American president, the sea change in LGBTQ rights, the apparent erosion of religious freedom—coupled with looming demographic changes and the declining religious loyalty of their own children—heightened the sense of dread among white evangelicals. But in truth, evangelical leaders had been perfecting this pitch for nearly fifty years. Evangelicals were looking for a protector, an aggressive, heroic, manly man, someone who wasn’t restrained by political correctness or feminine virtues, someone who would break the rules for the right cause. Try as they might—and they did try—no other candidate could measure up to Donald Trump when it came to flaunting an aggressive, militant masculinity. He became, in the words of his religious biographers, “the ultimate fighting champion for evangelicals.” 6

An English silence – one in which the unspoken words are perfectly understood by both parties. What did I dislike and distrust about adulthood? Well, to put it briefly: the sense of entitlement, the sense of superiority, the assumption of knowing better if not best, the vast banality of adult opinions, the way women took out compacts and powdered their noses, the way men sat in armchairs with their legs apart and their privates heavily outlined against their trousers, the way they talked about gardens and gardening…… their docile obedience to social norms, their snarky disapproval of anything satirical or questioning, their assumption that their children’s success would be measured by how well they imitated their parents, the suffocating noise they made when agreeing with one another… But I do believe now that when two lovers meet, there is already so much pre-history that only certain outcomes are possible. Whereas the lovers themselves imagine that the world is being reset and the possibilities are both new and infinite. On the one hand – and this is the part to do with the past – love feels like the vast and sudden easing of a life long frown. In love everything is both true and false; it’s the one subject on which it’s impossible to say anything absurd Misunderstanding is democratically distributed. Some men mistook boorishness for honesty. Just as others mistook primness for virtue.

God. God has no religion. God does not care if you're rich or poor, if you're black, white, Hispanic, Arabic or Asian. God does not care if you go to the temple on a full moon day or if you missed your weekly Sunday church mass. God does not care if you walk around in a bikini or Hijab. God is not moved by the man or woman who takes a moment off every day to be religious or fasts in his name for weeks at a time. God dwells within a being's mind, body and soul. God cares about their intentions. God is indeed almighty; he is a maestro of logic and a brilliant multi-tasker who dwells within billions of minds at a time. But that is only the big picture. So is there a smaller picture? Why yes, there is. But, it’s not so simple. In fact it may be the most denied fact in human life. You see, we humans are of dependent nature. We depend on the earth's soil and animals for food, we depend on its water, light and oxygen. We are a civilization of dependents. Someone once said that our biggest fear is not that we are inadequate but that we are powerful beyond measure. That is indeed true. We refuse to believe that God lives within us. We refuse to believe that our intelligence is God himself. We refuse to believe that we have all the power in the world within ourselves. We refuse to believe that we are stronger than our fears, larger than our limits and more than just a name. We would rather praise our successes and blame our ill fates to an external God. We refuse to take responsibility for our fate or what we do with it. We'd rather have someone to blame it all on. Maybe the thought of having so much power within ourselves scares us. Maybe we are too irresponsible to have such authority over our own lives. Maybe we are cowards. So we look for God in an outer space that we can't reach.

You will promote harmony in your words and actions. You will not compete with other leaders or compare to them. You will work together with others to make meaningful changes. You will not measure success in numbers: dollars, followers, ranks, sales, reviews, Facebook likes. Rather, you will measure by people helped, connections made, and moments savoured. You will help people accept themselves by being real with them. You will not show up on the pulpit for attention or approval. You will show up because you have something important to say. You will build tribes instead of cults. You will see your followers as equals. You will learn with them, and they will trust you. And there is nothing like the trust of people who resonate with your most authentic, vulnerable self to push you, every day, to do your best. It will hold you to a higher standard of behaviour. As a self-aware leader, you can be honest. This is the missing element in so many ineffective and addictive doctrines. You can tell people the things that are true but hard to hear. Not everyone will be brave enough to sidestep idealism, but those who do will appreciate your honesty. If you do not describe the darkness and the light, the voyager who has followed in your footsteps will believe he is lost. He will blame himself or blame you for teaching him lies. By being honest about what the journey looks like—failures, warts, and all—your teachings will become sources of consolation rather than frustration. As that voyager travels down the crooked, lonely paths within him, he may find a dark, terrifying cave, but if you mentioned it, he will feel elated. Yes, he will think, it looks horrifying, but at least I’m on track if I’ve found this awful thing. Your honesty may be bitter medicine, but when it digests, it’ll provide such potent healing that its taste will become a distant memory.

We're constantly reminded that this precious life is what you make of it. But what if you're not sure of what you want to make it into? On the one hand there are those resolute in their life's agenda and objectives, often set by the scriptural society they choose to adhere to, or one passed down from parents and family. They know what they want because they allow themselves to be told what is important, to be guided by those who have gone before. A proven formula maybe, or an unrealistic dream. Is true success in ones life fairly measured against someone else's achievements, should we use those achievements of others as our own check list? Surely we will find happiness just as they have, or not, at the end of it. The opposite end of the spectrum sees the tragic dreamers, unable to answer the question of why they're even here, the absence of knowing what their true calling is drives them close to insanity, desperate to live a meaningful life but haunted by the inability to see what constitutes as such. Often turning to artistic release to try and express themselves, their own high standards against which they measure themselves tragically, often fatally high. I find myself somewhere in the middle. I know what society expects but I don't agree with all of it. Much I have to adhere to simply to exist. Fortunately an education grants me a career not a job, that in the current world gives me choices that others do not and I am thankful. But I'm concious that the well beaten paths lead to the same final destination that others have arrived at and been disappointed in themselves, for not aiming higher or being brave enough to be different. Life is what we make of it, but regardless of how lofty or how humble our desired achievements are we should never lose sight of the fact that it is our life to live. We should all feel comfortable enough to make our own mistakes, to make deviations from the main path, to explore with our own eyes and minds. We should ignore those who tell us our dreams are too big, or to lowly or just plain wrong. Deciding whose own advice and guidance to follow, or ignore is often the hardest thing.

The modern educational system provides numerous other examples of reality bowing down to written records. When measuring the width of my desk, the yardstick I am using matters little. My desk remains the same width regardless of whether I say it is 200 centimetres or 78.74 inches. However, when bureaucracies measure people, the yardsticks they choose make all the difference. When schools began assessing people according to precise marks, the lives of millions of students and teachers changed dramatically. Marks are a relatively new invention. Hunter-gatherers were never marked for their achievements, and even thousands of years after the Agricultural Revolution, few educational establishments used precise marks. A medieval apprentice cobbler did not receive at the end of the year a piece of paper saying he has got an A on shoelaces but a C minus on buckles. An undergraduate in Shakespeare’s day left Oxford with one of only two possible results – with a degree, or without one. Nobody thought of giving one student a final mark of 74 and another student 88.6 Credit 1.24 24. A European map of Africa from the mid-nineteenth century. The Europeans knew very little about the African interior, which did not prevent them from dividing the continent and drawing its borders. Only the mass educational systems of the industrial age began using precise marks on a regular basis. Since both factories and government ministries became accustomed to thinking in the language of numbers, schools followed suit. They started to gauge the worth of each student according to his or her average mark, whereas the worth of each teacher and principal was judged according to the school’s overall average. Once bureaucrats adopted this yardstick, reality was transformed. Originally, schools were supposed to focus on enlightening and educating students, and marks were merely a means of measuring success. But naturally enough, schools soon began focusing on getting high marks. As every child, teacher and inspector knows, the skills required to get high marks in an exam are not the same as a true understanding of literature, biology or mathematics. Every child, teacher and inspector also knows that when forced to choose between the two, most schools will go for the marks.

children from pain and loss and tragedy and illness. You cannot be sure that you will always be married, let alone happily married. You cannot be sure you will always be employed, or healthy, or relatively sane. All you can do is face the world with quiet grace and hope you make a sliver of difference. Humility does not mean self-abnegation, lassitude, detachment; it’s more like a calm recognition that you must trust in that which does not make sense, that which is unreasonable, illogical, silly, ridiculous, crazy by the measure of most of our culture; you must trust that you being a very good you matters somehow. That trying to be an honest and tender parent will echo for centuries through your tribe. That doing your chosen work with creativity and diligence will shiver people far beyond your ken. That being an attentive and generous friend and citizen will somehow matter in the social fabric, save a thread or two from unraveling. And you must do all of this with the sure and certain knowledge that you will never get proper credit for it, at all, one bit, and in fact the vast majority of the things you do right will go utterly unremarked; except, perhaps, in ways we will never know or understand, by the Arab Jew who once shouted about his cloak, and may have been somehow also the One who invented and infuses this universe and probably a million others—not to put a hard number on it or anything. Humility, the final frontier, as my late brother Kevin used to say. When we are young we build a self, a persona, a story in which to reside, or several selves in succession, or several at once, sometimes; when we are older we take on other roles and personas, other masks and duties; and you and I both know men and women who become trapped in the selves they worked so hard to build, so desperately imprisoned that sometimes they smash their lives simply to escape who they no longer wish to be; but finally, I think, if we are lucky, if we read the book of pain and loss with humility, we realize that we are all broken and small and brief, that none among us is actually rich or famous or more beautiful than another; and then, perhaps, we begin to understand something deep and true finally about humility. This is what I know: that the small is huge, that the tiny is vast, that pain is part and parcel of the gift of joy, and that there is love, and then there is everything else. You either walk toward love or away from it with every breath you draw. Humility is the road to love. Humility, maybe, is love. That could be. I wouldn’t know; I am a muddle and a conundrum, shuffling slowly along the road, gaping in wonder, trying to just see and say what is, trying to leave shreds and shards of ego along the road like wisps of litter and chaff.

It is natural for people to fear that such an inherently critical environment will feel threatening and unpleasant, like a trip to the dentist. The key is to look at the viewpoints being offered, in any successful feedback group, as additive, not competitive. A competitive approach measures other ideas against your own, turning the discussion into a debate to be won or lost. An additive approach, on the other hand, starts with the understanding that each participant contributes something (even if it’s only an idea that fuels the discussion—and ultimately doesn’t work). The Braintrust is valuable because it broadens your perspective, allowing you to peer—at least briefly—through others’ eyes.

Otherwise we run the risk of failing God in the one thing that so greatly determined His choice of us; and in failing God, we shall fail ourselves. Find your personal worth in your special calling from God Our Christian vocation carries responsibility, but it has its compensations, too. One such compensation is the wholesome feeling of personal worth that should be mine. If I am important to God, I am indeed an important person. Other people may not rate me very highly. My talents may be quite limited, and to those who know me, I may be just an average sort of person. My job may be a relatively humble one, and I may be tempted to feel inferior as I see others around me making their mark in the world. Then I remember that money, position, and popularity - all the yardsticks by which the world measures success - are to God nothing more than a child's playthings. Eventually they must be cast aside and left behind. In the meantime, if I am in a state of grace and am following God's will as my road map through life, then every least action of mine has an everlasting value. However lowly the world may esteem me, every breath I draw is precious to God. Speaking again in human terms, God made me because He needs me. There is something that has to be done that only I can do. What greater personal worth could there be than to be needed by God? It matters little that I do not know the nature of my essential role in God's plan. It is enough to know that I am as valuable to God as the most distinguished person the world has ever acclaimed. This sense of personal worth is not pride. It is not even vanity. Pride consists in declaring my independence of God, as though I alone were responsible for whatever merit I possess. Vanity is simply a silly preoccupation with God's lesser natural gifts, such as looks or talents. It would not be humility - it would be a belittling of God's wisdom and goodness - to pretend that I do not amount to much, that my life is meaningless, that I would never have been missed if I had not been born. It is quite true that apart from God I am nothing. It is just as true that God's love has made me great. To admit this is to do simple justice to God. I must never surrender to the temptation to think, "I am no good. I am a failure." Neither must I surrender - ever - to self-pity; to the feeling that nobody loves me, nobody cares about me. How awful it would be, after all the love God has expended and is expending on me, to brood and sorrow because I do not receive as much human love as I might wish. That would be about as silly as the complaint of a millionaire at not winning on the penny slot machine. A self-pitying person can only be one who is weak in faith or ignorant in religion. God's love for me is such a tremendous thing! From my sense of Christian vocation there follows another effect: freedom from serious worry. If I really believe that God loves me with an infinite love (as He does) and that He wants what is best for me (as He does), I cannot worry very long or very intensely. God is infinitely wise; He always knows what is best. God is infinitely powerful; He can accomplish anything

Success today is too often measured by statistics. Large circulation figures are very impressive to people outside of the profession and to library directors who are not familiar with the aims of the public library children’s room. However, in spite of the emphasis on tangible proof, the children’s library which accomplishes its true aims will make itself felt so positively that even the most pragmatic board of trustees should be convinced of its worth.

A large part of Sparta’s success was due to their observing fundamental principles that included honor, Know Thyself, nothing in excess, Keep the Measure, loyalty, love, perseverance, and selflessness.

Mixed thoughts of business and pleasure, 100 million dollar meetings is a success of true measure. Privately bonded to the treasury of secrecy, it's secrets that give keys to open sesame, look to the Bible for it's a sweet recipe of Supremacy. Find the knowledge to it all and never sell it for loose lips sink ships.

Success is measured in many different ways, but it all leads to one common denominator. And that's True Happiness.

One must bear in mind, that those who have the true modern spirit need not modernise, just as those who are truly brave are not braggarts. Modernism is not in the dress of the Europeans; or in the hideous structures, where their children are interned when they take their lessons; or in the square houses with flat straight wall-surfaces, pierced with parallel lines of windows, where these people are caged in their lifetime; certainly modernism is not in their ladies' bonnets, carrying on them loads of incongruities. These are not modern, but merely European. True modernism is freedom of mind, not slavery of taste. It is independence of thought and action, not tutelage under European schoolmasters. It is science, but not its wrong application in life,—a mere imitation of our science teachers who reduce it into a superstition absurdly invoking its aid for all impossible purposes. Science, when it oversteps its limits and occupies the whole region of life, has its fascination. It looks so powerful because of its superficiality,—as does a hippopotamus which is very little else but physical. Science speaks of the struggle for existence, but forgets that man's existence is not merely of the surface. Man truly exists in the ideal of perfection, whose depth and height are not yet measured. Life based upon science is attractive to some men, because it has all the characteristics of sport; it feigns seriousness, but is not profound. When you go a-hunting, the less pity you have the better; for your one object is to chase the game and kill it, to feel that you are the greater animal, that your method of destruction is thorough and scientific. Because, therefore, a sportsman is only a superficial man,—his fullness of humanity not being there to hamper him,—he is successful in killing innocent life and is happy. And the life of science is that superficial life. It pursues success with skill and thoroughness, and takes no account of the higher nature of man. But even science cannot tow humanity against truth and be successful; and those whose minds are crude enough to plan their lives upon the supposition, that man is merely a hunter and his paradise the paradise of sportsman, will be rudely awakened in the midst of their trophies of skeletons and skulls.

In this talk, I tell the story of how, when I was first a manager at New York Tech, I didn’t feel like a manager at all. And while I liked the idea of being in charge, I went to work every day feeling like something of a fraud. Even in the early years of Pixar, when I was the president, that feeling didn’t go away. I knew many presidents of other companies and had a good idea of their personality characteristics. They were aggressive and extremely confident. Knowing that I didn’t share many of those traits, again I felt like a fraud. In truth, I was afraid of failure. Not until about eight or nine years ago, I tell them, did the imposter feeling finally go away. I have several things to thank for that evolution: my experience of both weathering our failures and watching our films succeed; my decisions, post–Toy Story, to recommit myself to Pixar and its culture; and my enjoyment of my maturing relationship with Steve and John. Then, after fessing up, I ask the group, “How many of you feel like a fraud?” And without fail, every hand in the room shoots up. As managers, we all start off with a certain amount of trepidation. When we are new to the position, we imagine what the job is in order to get our arms around it, then we compare ourselves against our made-up model. But the job is never what we think it is. The trick is to forget our models about what we “should” be. A better measure of our success is to look at the people on our team and see how they are working together. Can they rally to solve key problems? If the answer is yes, you are managing well.

Success should not be measured by financial gain; true success is doing something you love for a living.

True success is measured not by what we possess but rather how much we are loved.

I am acutely aware that all I have been able to achieve has been in large part due to circumstances outside my control. This is why I teach, and this is why I write. I want to be one of those opportunities for others. Perhaps this is the true measure of success.

Most men with a purpose are focused on money. This is because a mature man knows that money gives him choices, freedom, and peace of mind. Also, money is one of the only things in the world that’s a true measurement of success.

Faithfulness to one's calling is ultimately the only true measure of success. By your faithfulness you will change people and creation according to God's plan.

This ”joy” which I have selected as the mark of the true fairy-story (or romance), or as the seal upon it, merits more consideration. Probably every writer making a secondary world, a fantasy, every sub-creator, wishes in some measure to be a real maker, or hopes that he is drawing on reality: hopes that the peculiar quality of this secondary world (if not all the details) are derived from Reality, or are flowing into it. If he indeed achieves a quality that can fairly be described by the dictionary definition: “inner consistency of reality,” it is difficult to conceive how this can be, if the work does not in some way partake of reality. The peculiar quality of the ”joy” in successful Fantasy can thus be explained as a sudden glimpse of the underlying reality or truth. It is not only a “consolation” for the sorrow of this world, but a satisfaction, and an answer to that question, “Is it true?” The answer to this question that I gave at first was (quite rightly): “If you have built your little world well, yes: it is true in that world.” That is enough for the artist (or the artist part of the artist). But in the “eucatastrophe” we see in a brief vision that the answer may be greater—it may be a faroff gleam or echo of evangelium in the real world. The use of this word gives a hint of my epilogue. It is a serious and dangerous matter. It is presumptuous of me to touch upon such a theme; but if by grace what I say has in any respect any validity, it is, of course, only one facet of a truth incalculably rich: finite only because the capacity of Man for whom this was done is finite. I would venture to say that approaching the Christian Story from this direction, it has long been my feeling (a joyous feeling) that God redeemed the corrupt making-creatures, men, in a way fitting to this aspect, as to others, of their strange nature. The Gospels contain a fairystory, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels—peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving: “mythical” in their perfect, self-contained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe. But this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfillment of Creation. The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man's history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the “inner consistency of reality.” There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary Art, that is, of Creation. To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath. It is not difficult to imagine the peculiar excitement and joy that one would feel, if any specially beautiful fairy-story were found to be “primarily” true, its narrative to be history, without thereby necessarily losing the mythical or allegorical significance that it had possessed. It is not difficult, for one is not called upon to try and conceive anything of a quality unknown. The joy would have exactly the same quality, if not the same degree, as the joy which the “turn” in a fairy-story gives: such joy has the very taste of primary truth. (Otherwise its name would not be joy.) It looks forward (or backward: the direction in this regard is unimportant) to the Great Eucatastrophe. The Christian joy, the Gloria, is of the same kind; but it is preeminently (infinitely, if our capacity were not finite) high and joyous. But this story is supreme; and it is true. Art has been verified. God is the Lord, of angels, and of men—and of elves. Legend and History have met and fused.

the true value of an organization cannot be measured by the success it has achieved based on a set of arbitrary metrics over arbitrary time frames. The true value of an organization is measured by the desire others have to contribute to that organization’s ability to keep succeeding, not just during the time they are there, but well beyond their own tenure.

I thought I was alone in this, but about seven out of ten people feel like they’re faking their way through the world, like their accomplishments are tainted.16 And the more the success, the greater the pressure to measure up to the applause. All the trophies and medals and awards get spun on a stick, announcing a version of you that’s mostly spin.

But just as was true in understanding flight, problems in our lives don’t always map neatly to theories on a one-to-one basis.

Your Future Self is the driver of your life. Your Future Self is different than you expect. Your Future Self is inevitable, yet the outcome is optional. Your Future Self is what you’re measuring. Failing as your Future Self is how you succeed. Being successful is only possible by being true to your Future Self. Your view of God impacts your views of your own Future Self.

but worried less about how he was seen by those below him. As Samuel Johnson purportedly wrote, “The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.

So if we are giving our worship to things like success or relationships, the moment we don’t have those things we go through an identity crisis. When you use the world’s tools to assess your worth, your measurements will always be off. You’ll find yourself trying to measure up against something that will always leave you feeling like you’ve fallen short. Just as you can’t measure something with a hammer or pound nails with a measuring tape, you can’t use worldly tools to measure your value and worth. You were never meant to use those tools.

William James said near the end of the nineteenth century, “No mental modification ever occurs which is not accompanied or followed by a bodily change.” A hundred years later, Norman Cousins summarized the modern view of mind-body interactions with the succinct phrase “Belief becomes biology.”6 That is, an external suggestion can become an internal expectation, and that internal expectation can manifest in the physical body. While the general idea of mind-body connections is now widely accepted, forty years ago it was considered dangerously heretical nonsense. The change in opinion came about largely because of hundreds of studies of the placebo effect, psychosomatic illness, psychoneuroimmunology, and the spontaneous remission of serious disease.7 In studies of drug tests and disease treatments, the placebo response has been estimated to account for between 20 to 40 percent of positive responses. The implication is that the body’s hard, physical reality can be significantly modified by the more evanescent reality of the mind.8 Evidence supporting this implication can be found in many domains. For example: • Hypnotherapy has been used successfully to treat intractable cases of breast cancer pain, migraine headache, arthritis, hypertension, warts, epilepsy, neurodermatitis, and many other physical conditions.9 People’s expectations about drinking can be more potent predictors of behavior than the pharmacological impact of alcohol.10 If they think they are drinking alcohol and expect to get drunk, they will in fact get drunk even if they drink a placebo. Fighter pilots are treated specially to give them the sense that they truly have the “right stuff.” They receive the best training, the best weapons systems, the best perquisites, and the best aircraft. One consequence is that, unlike other soldiers, they rarely suffer from nervous breakdowns or post-traumatic stress syndrome even after many episodes of deadly combat.11 Studies of how doctors and nurses interact with patients in hospitals indicate that health-care teams may speed death in a patient by simply diagnosing a terminal illness and then letting the patient know.12 People who believe that they are engaged in biofeedback training are more likely to report peak experiences than people who are not led to believe this.13 Different personalities within a given individual can display distinctly different physiological states, including measurable differences in autonomic-nervous-system functioning, visual acuity, spontaneous brain waves, and brainware-evoked potentials.14 While the idea that the mind can affect the physical body is becoming more acceptable, it is also true that the mechanisms underlying this link are still a complete mystery. Besides not understanding the biochemical and neural correlates of “mental intention,” we have almost no idea about the limits of mental influence. In particular, if the mind interacts not only with its own body but also with distant physical systems, as we’ve seen in the previous chapter, then there should be evidence for what we will call “distant mental interactions” with living organisms.

How to Write your Own Success Story Everyone’s story is unique. Where your story starts may not be up to you, but where it ends definitely is. Every twist and turn is an opportunity to choose what comes next. Make that choice authentically yours, and you can’t do anything but succeed. Your Rough Draft We all have a different way of finding out what will work for us. But no matter which route we take on the journey to success – however you define it – we have to get into the messy and the profound in equal measure. And once it all comes together, the structure will make sense: the who, the why and the how. As you’re reading this, you’re probably frantically wondering how to do this, or finding reasons why it can’t happen. Great. You’ve just stumbled on your first limiting belief, the one that’s literally stopping you from creating the outcome you want. At this point, you can deepen your brainstorming process. Imagine what is real, true and possible. Not what you think is real, true and possible but what actually is. Once you have a rough idea of what you truly deeply want, learn from those who’ve gone before you on this journey. They have a lot to share and they can teach us about how to create the conditions for successful follow through. Hint….its about being authentic and invigorated. Your state of being is everything. Writing Your Success Story: the Essentials 1. Tolerate Uncertainty If you want to write a new success story for yourself, commit to a brand new way of thinking and being. It’s normal to feel afraid of what you can’t see ahead. How you choose to be with that fear is a central key to your success. Who do you need to be to create what you want? To tolerate the uncertainty of letting go of the old to make way for the new? 2. Take Your Time Remember to allow that learning takes time. How long it takes for it to all come together depends on you and the universe. Time is your friend, no matter how it feels. There’s no deadline. There is only now. Are you giving yourself an arbitrary deadline? One you feel you ‘should’ be able to meet? Are you holding unhelpful, unrealistic expectations of yourself? 3. The Lure of the ‘One Right Way’ There’s another common misperception out there that there must be one, perfect and efficient way to get this right. People are in such a hurry to make the change, feel happier, and get that business started, that they miss all the best guideposts to change. In writing your next best steps, your authentic self is trying to get your attention. Are you listening? Responding? 4. “I did it my way” There is only your way. How you find it is up to you. Once you’ve committed to creating your great story, understand that you’ve signed up for a miraculously creative endeavour. There’s no getting it right in the first attempt, or even the fifth… There’s only living the new way of being once you understand what the change actually is – practicing it until it’s fully integrated into your everyday life. Ask yourself, What way of being are you ready to incorporate into your day? How will you hold yourself accountable for this commitment to yourself? When you pay attention to the process, there’s no way for you to fail.

The true success of a music is measured by how far it travels from where it was created and how many people it impacts, but sometimes the fact that it just touches the lives of a few people makes it very successful in its own right!

Bill Thrall, in his book TrueFaced, states that eventually all our masks will crack and inevitably our true selves will be exposed. This most recent economic crisis certainly has caused the masks of many men to crack and crumble. The pain for many has been unbearable. Thrall, however, offers us an interesting, deeper view of life’s difficulties. He suggests that the struggles we face could be the best things that could ever happen to us because if our masks succeed and help us to remain hidden and protected, who would ever really know us? We would be totally inauthentic, living only to perform for and impress others. Most significantly, we might go through all our days missing out on the life God intended for us.

For one thing, it raises the question of what success really means. We live in a culture shaped by an unspoken, yet very powerful, assumption that success means money and all the things it can buy. So many of us unquestioningly devote most of our energies to striving for material success. It’s easy to get caught up in the cycle of constantly pursuing the bigger job, the nicer house, the more luxurious car. But once you embrace the idea of living by a code, it becomes clear that individual character ~ not your job title, your lifestyle, or your bank account ~ is the true measure of who you are.

Choose for yourselves today the god whom you will serve: the god of wealth, the god of prestige and power, the god of pleasure, the god of achievement. But as for me and my family, we will serve the Lord (Joshua 24:15, author paraphrase).

Character, wisdom, and love make up the essence of what it means to be an authentic man. In fact, I would like to address the significance of each of these qualities and why it is so important that we possess them.

I realize that true success is not measured in the number of people who attend church on a Sunday, as good a thing as that may seem. Success in God’s eyes is seen in the impact the message of the Kingdom has on how people think and live in my city, region and nation.

Being physically tough is measured by how many fights you win, but mental toughness is measured by how you react when all the chips are stacked against you, how fast you get back on track when life kicks you in the nuts. Any fool can win a fight, but it takes a person with true grit to never give up when all seems lost.” – Benjamin Bayani, the Nation

So many men spend their lives looking for some other stream to finally and forever quench the thirsts of their souls. However, Jesus says there is no other stream. And He is very clear about the fact that if we do not drink from this spring—the fountain of living water— we will die.