The Measure Of Success

In days of yore, I was always focused on the end. I didn't understand it when people said that it wasn't the destination, it was the journey that was important. It was a total "huh?" disconnect for me.

In the business world, success is defined by "results." If you are a sales person, it depends on how many and how large of sales you make, how big an account you bring in. If you are a lawyer, it's how many cases you've won. For a real estate agent, it's snagging the multi-million dollar piece of property to close.

We all like to set goals and achieve them, whatever our reasons. Maybe it's for the sense of accomplishment- a creation completed. Perhaps we want to succeed to feed our egos for whatever reason. Perhaps we are committed to something we believe will benefit the world. When things go according to our design, we automatically take it as our accomplishment, feel a sense of success. It feels good.

But what if we try to do something and it doesn't turn out like we hoped it would? We give it our all, we bring expertise, do all the right things, work really hard at it and nothing comes through? Are we then incompetent failures? The traditional business model of success=performance would say so.

I disagree.

Many years ago, I was a lay midwife. At that time, it was a calling that in my state rode the edges of the law. If any one of a number of things would have happened to either a mom or baby under my care which were outside my control, I could have been arrested for practicing medicine without a license. I can tell you first hand that most of birth is out of the control of medical personel. That anyone has any control is an illusion of the highest degree. Why do you think there are so many C Sections? It's the only way to semi-control birth.

I read obstetrical texts for my training, did intensive apprentice training with other midwives, took classes and workshops from nurses and doctors. Even in my small conservative community, I had a few doctors that respected my opionion and treated me as a peer. In other words I was good at what I did and was respected by the "profession" by those who would open their minds a bit.

But if anything would have happened, even if I had done everything correctly, sometimes especially if I had done things correctly (like use a restricted drug to stop a woman from hemorrhaging), I could have been thrown in jail. And just because I chose, for very logical reasons, to not finish my RN degree and licensure process, I would have automatically been judged as misguided and irresponsibe by some, to evil and dangerous by others. This, while having nothing but loving intent and passionate commitment to something I fervently believed parents and babies had a right to: the ability to choose to birth at home.

I then had an agriculturally based business. As the years went by, we hired more and more Mexicans. They were happy. They worked. They didn't complain. They made the job fun. Given the nature of the industry, we were not able to ever offer them any sort of advancement that would make them wealthy or successful by regular business mode standards. They worked hard and in horrible conditions (it gets really hot here, lots of mosquitoes, and ag work is hard labor intensive work when you do it organically). In many respects, they worked much harder than many folk who made much more money than they ever would.

And then as I started looking around more I started to challenge this idea of success=outcome even more.

I think of all the women who have births that require intervention. Many of them are ashamed that they have to get a C Section, feel like failures because they want drugs to ease pain. I think of parents who work really hard, love their kids, do their best and their beloved child ends up a junkie. The parents blame themselves, feel like failures of the highest degree. I watch people who can't lose weight having to deal with the world looking at them as losers.

I watch my healer friends, who have such high intentions to give service to the world, struggling with their bills even when they work forty hours a week plus...if they can get that many clients. I have met very few alternative healers who make an income that would be considered "successful," because their services are not deemed important enough to compensate as well as a lawyer or doctor or consultant. Many of them invest lots of money in tuitions. They spend years educating themselves, investing in their job. The people they serve are greatly impacted, yet we don't value that as much as we do being able to close a real estate deal.

And what of a business owner who goes bankrupt? Many from the outside look in and see mismanagement. Maybe there was, maybe not. Maybe there were things way outside the person's ability to predict (heck anyone to predict) what might happen at any given time. I sometimes think that the label "mismanagement" is applied so that others looking in can feel better, safer in their world. I understand it's important to keep worldviews intact and that judgments often help us to feel safe. I've learned, though, in countless ways, that unless I am in the middle of something, I can never know what's really going on anywhere. Heck...I can't even understand lots of the energetics of what I am in the middle of. How do I think I can figure it out for any other situation?

I've known of many women who have C Sections with 7 pound babies and are told that their pelvis is too small to ever deliver vaginally. Two years later, they easily give birth vaginally to a nine pound baby. I've known of parents who have one child who is happy and well adjusted and their other child commits suicide. I've known of business owners who lose everything only to come back with the same set of skills and do really well in their next one.

There's lots more to my world than just formula A leads to happy result B. There are energetics, unconscious beliefs, soul tasks and circumstances that no one can judge from the outside which influence "outcomes." I've had situations in my life I can point to and smile because my ego gets to think it "succeeded." There have been times in the past of incredible pain where I've made decisions that I've hung my head in shame in until I realized that I did the best I could. That's the only thing I can ask of myself and it's the only thing I ask of anyone else.

I've changed my definition of success. It's not about outcome. All I have conscious control over, all I can truly succeed at in any situation, is my intention and how I choose to honorably act in that situation. "Honorably" being defined as being in integrity with myself and others around me. I can't control other people, I can't make the world be what I want it to be. I have to operate from a place of trust until proven otherwise, I have to let go of circumstances that don't turn out the way I hoped they would and try my best to keep true to my Voice. It took me well into my late 30's to get that whole "journey" thing. But I'm ever so happy I finally got it.

All Photos by Nancy Rotenberg