How do we measure success?
Confession time: I love Anne of Green Gables. I love the character of Anne. I love her matchless vocabulary and imagination, the way she sees beauty and the way she feels emotion. All of L.M. Montgomery’s characters are intriguing and hold a special place in my heart. It’s been ages since I have watched the movies and even longer since I’ve read Montgomery’s timeless books, but so many memories of my childhood, time spent with my mom, movie quotes, and nostalgia revolve around that Anne girl. (Before I know it, my 1 yo daughter will be old enough to enjoy them with me, but let’s not think of that right now, k?)
Montgomery, within the characters she has created, imparts such pearls of wisdom on those who read and enjoy her books, like this one:
“Next to trying and winning, the best thing is trying and failing.” – L.M. Montgomery
Do you agree with this, or would you prefer to only do something if you think it’ll be safe… certain… successful?
Growing up–like early teen years–I was always coming up with unusual ways to earn money or start my own side business (I raised chickens to sell eggs and meat, taught the little neighbor boy piano, cut balsam boughs and sold them to Christmas wreath makers, collected aluminum cans, and other rather random gigs that were not super lucrative but allowed me the privilege to earn and save for bigger ticket items). Never once growing up did it ever click that I would be gleaning bits of business wisdom from one of my favorite “girlie movies.” And yet, here we are.
Do you agree that it’s better to have experienced less-than-ideal results and still have TRIED, or better to only do something if you are guaranteed that the results will be good? That you’ll feel comfortable.
I used to be the latter, and still am to some extent (hard to strip away all of those less-desirable qualities all at once, hey?). But lately I’ve adopted an attitude of TRYING (or rather, this attitude seems to have adopted me?) like with my course launch last month and now with a slightly new business direction I’m moving toward.
There’s never a guarantee of wild success in life or business, but I promise you will not experience dismal failure every. single. time either. For example, regarding the launch of my copywriting & content course: honestly, it didn’t go as well as I had HOPED. But realistically speaking, it was not a total failure. I’m really happy with the plan I created and executed, how many people jumped on board to support me, the good words about the course from the people who have taken it (it’s HUGE to have a validated idea and know that what you have is valuable!), and now I know that I need to get my course in front of more people and more eyeballs in order to statistically get the launch numbers I want.
Does this resonate with you at all? Can you pinpoint a time in your entrepreneur years that you took the leap and didn’t quite make it to that “goal” ledge–but that you landed safely anyway, albeit a little short of “goal”?
Entrepreneurs have the uphill task of figuring things out as we go. We don’t have a boss telling us exactly what to do in business to get the job done. We don’t have a roadmap or specified trainings to help us get from point A to point B. If we are creating something from scratch, we are often going it alone. There are myriads of mentors, trainings, and courses we can utilize to help learn skills and implement them, but we have the privilege (yet, battle) of paving our own road, so to speak.
Because no one’s road is or ever will be exactly like yours.
So winning is more fun (haha, that’s a given, right!), but failure is NOT permanent. My stubborn little heart is working through that even as we speak. How’s your stubborn little heart? Hopefully this speaks encouragement to your soul and lifts you up to try that one thing, even though there is no guarantee of smashing success.
If we don’t try, how will we ever know?
