As many as it takes.

Kathy and my latest adventure involves a great deal of reflection and self-improvement; for your life to be the best it can be, you have to be the best 'you' that you can be. Generally speaking this means dwelling on how to succeed, the way to train your brain to see everything in a new and positive light, and other ideas of that general nature. But you also have to deal with the other aspects of your personality, the negative aspects that might be holding you back.

And so I've been thinking lately about how I deal with failure, which inevitably lead me to ask myself exactly what failure is and how I decide when I have failed and when I have succeeded. And, if I have failed, what do I do then? Because, let's face it, everybody is going to fail, and for many of us we are going to fail more than we are going to succeed. Is that discouraging?

Well, no. Or I should say, not now it's not discouraging, although it used to be. What I have discovered is that I used to measure success by short-term goals, did I accomplish this or that today, or this week? If I did not achieve those short-term goals then I labeled the effort a failure, because I have been trained to think in terms of the same instant gratification society as everybody else. I want it now, I want to achieve it now, and if I don't then I must be a failure. And since most of the time I fail, what's the point? Right? Isn't that how a lot of us think? Why bother doing something that probably isn't going to work anyway?

What I finally realized is that I have short-term thinking but a long-term life. What if I had discovered this when I was 25, what would my life look like now? Much different. But I didn't discover it at 25, I discovered it 30 years later. So what? I will judge my latest venture in 2 years, no less, because if I work hard for 2 years and that leads me to a lifestyle that gives me more fun, freedom and fulfillment, is that worth it?

Heck yeah.

The decisions I made three years ago determine the life I am living today, so if I want to change my life three years from now I have to make changes today. How many times am I willing to fail until I succeed?

As many as it takes.