Article Moving Forward With Hope

Do you see yourself as a failure? Does it seem like everything you do turns out wrong? Do you worry that it will always be this way?  John Maxwell writes in his book “Failing Forward”, “The difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure.” Have you ever considered the distance between failure and success? Write those two words on a whiteboard, a scrap of paper or in your notebook. Draw a line between the two words. Now, define what complete success means to you; not to anyone else but just TO YOU. When you look at the length of the line, do you define failure as anything less than complete success?

In a line from the movie Princess Bride, Miracle Max says “It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive.” Success is like that. You can decide that you are able to reach success by defining it as something within reach, and failure is at the bottom.  Visualize your level of success, are you partly there? Are you getting there? We all need to have high standards for our lives but not set so high and judged so rigorously that we can never reach our goals.  In the Bible, Jeremiah 29:11 says; “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Write “Hope” above success and focus on reaching that point.