1. Everybody’s version of success is different.
When someone says they have success at something, find out what success means in their definition.
They might mean, “I make a lot of money doing this,” and you might mean, “I am really happy doing this.”
If you want to learn from someone, you need to have a shared definition of success. Otherwise they might teach you all they know, but it won’t help you get where you want to go.
2. Failure is just a thing.
We’ve been taught to see failure as shameful, embarrassing, and unnecessary. I don’t love failure, and you probably don’t either, but failure is just an experience. Failure is one of many possible outcomes.
Sometimes failure at one thing is the key to learning what you need to learn to succeed at the next thing.
Sometimes failure saves you from getting locked into a type of success that you don’t really want.
And sometimes failure is just a sucky experience that you have, and you don’t have to like it, but it isn’t shameful and it isn’t the end of the world.
3. People aren’t accurate.
It has taken me years to figure this out. I know. It’s silly. You probably have known this for some time. I’m slow at some things.
I try to be accurate. I’m not saying I always succeed. But I do try. Accuracy is important to me.
Accuracy isn’t important to everyone. Some people will regularly employ exaggerations, hyperbole, and generalizations. They won’t warn you, “Hey, this is a bit of an exaggeration…” They’ll just say the thing as if it is accurate and it’s up to you to realize that it isn’t.
As a general rule (that’s a generalization, see, I’m giving you a warning about it), when people make broad, absolute statements, they aren’t focused on accuracy.
This whole discussion may not be of any use to you. You probably know how it goes because you’re more people-savvy than I am. But sometimes these little social habits, well, they slip by me. Then I wake up and go, “Ooooooh, that MAY NOT be ENTIRELY true, that thing she said! Aha!” And understanding dawns and things make more sense.
A little more sense.
I still don’t know why we can’t just be accurate.