The Failure of Success

This provocatively titled and stimulating and book is about redefining what matters beyond a superficial understanding of success as material, which means that many people cannot by definition achieve it. Many successful people have been through multiple failures and have succeeded against the odds through resilience and persistence. They will often say that it is their failures that have been the stepping-stones to eventual success. Jennifer questions the very definitions of these terms, suggesting, like the Bhagavad-Gita, that we should release the fruits of action in terms of outcomes and aim instead for contentment and a sense of meaning. Ironically, fame brings its own stresses in terms of loss of privacy and constant attention from the press. Samuel Beckett famously said that we should fail again and fail better; as the author shows, failure can be entertaining, and she herself did evening classes in clowning. Failure can also be constructively interpreted as feedback.

Another interesting issue is success and failure within families or between generations. On the one hand, successful parents create high expectations, but on the other they may fail to nurture the special talents of their children who are different from them. Setting goals can be very focusing, but on the other hand we also need flexibility to make course corrections; I agree with Jim Rohn when he states that the main value of goals and achieving them is the person we become in the process. The real agenda is a process of transformation, and the inner dimension is what ultimately counts in terms of our habitual state of mind. As mentioned above, the author emphasises contentment, commenting that this means letting go of any striving for success and control. I think we need a balance here in terms of being content with where we are and who we are while at the same time looking forward to new projects and activities and being open to guidance from within: a life of intention and love.