Success is a demon – I suppose that is why a lot of people runaway from it.
They say that they want to succeed. They have dreams. They plan for the future and what they want to do and make long term plans. A step by step process to success. It’s all laid out! Everything appears to be so easy! It’s a piece if cake!
So you start off slowly, taking it one step at a time. Everything is going well and you see that your goal is closer than it was before. Your confidence is rising and you’re happy! Then, after the success of meeting a few of the smaller goals you may start to wonder what it would be like to reach the main goal. To complete the task and —— wait. Complete the task?
You mean that if I follow all the steps, one by one, I’ll eventually reach the end? What am I going to do then? It, it can’t just end! What will I have to strive towards? I won’t have any challenges, no daily goals, no mid-way pat on the backs for encouragement. What if I’m rejected because of my success? It will all be over……
Such thinking, as demonstrated in the previous paragraph, is very detrimental. By doing so we create our own demon that we are reluctant to face and, when this happens, it takes a bit longer for us to move to our next goal. We start getting writers block and loose concentration. We involve ourselves in other things – that may even be related to our main goal ( but are really not ) to avoid getting any closer to the success of completing our goal.
What if you finish your work and people actually like it? Will they expect you to produce the same result next time or be better? Success can be stressful.
Back in High School (a thousand years ago) I had a teacher who told us that a person is only as good as their last mistake. Wouldn’t it make more sense, then, for people to be wary of failure than in succeeding? It would, but we tend to fear that our success will be our failure and that is what people will remember. No one will care about how much you worked and toiled on a project, all the effort that went into it; all they will remember is that you failed. If failure defines how good you are then why bother trying to succeed?
It’s not good to live with demons. Everyone who has succeeded in something has had to stared down their own demons. Or, if they are like me, the staring match has turned into all out war, there are casualties on both sides and they are fighting still.
Success isn’t easy. It doesn’t matter what you’re goal is, or what you’re trying to accomplish, the road is going to be hard. There will be high points and there will be many lows but its up to you to decide the outcome. Give up, take the easy route and stop trying, or are you going to pick yourself up and carry on? With every step, every fraction of an inch you take towards your goal is another strike against the demon you made out of success.
Pause a moment. Breathe. Don’t you lower your eyes to the ground and think you’ve been hit to many times. Your legs may be shaky, and your spirit may be on life support, but, if you start moving in the right direction then those demons will start backing away from you.
It’s time to crush that demon of success and lay claim to victory.
Voiced Compositions 