Success and Faithfulness

I guess I wrote the first late twentieth century, modern book on success based in real philosophy, rather than hyperbolic anecdote and magical thinking. It wasn't a subject on my professional radar but as business groups asked me to speak about it, I did more and more historical research and grew excited about what I was discovering. Audiences responded so enthusiastically, I decided to write it all up and then there was a literary auction and Putnam won, and bought the rights to "True Success: A New Philosophy of Excellence" to help launch a new imprint, Grosset Books (along with D'Amasio's important look at the mind, "Descartes' Error"). I followed up with more work on the skills and arts of success in "The Art of Achievement" and then looked at what the great Roman Stoics had to say about life success in "The Stoic Art of Living." I continue to work on the topic and discover new depths of insight on it. Success is in some sense desired by all of us but understood by few.

My friend the philosopher Aaron Simmons is using that first book in a course this semester. And he has a Tedx Talk on the importance of another central concept in our lives, that of faithfulness. We're not always expected to be successful, but we're always called to be faithful - to our talents, our commitments, our sense of mission or purpose, and to our convictions about what's right. We'll often stumble along the way. Things won't always work out the way we hope. But that's a part of the adventure. I've seen some popular voices try to replace the concept of success in our sphere of concerns with that of significance, or even with the vital idea of faithfulness. And yet, on a quick analysis, we seek to be successful in our quest for significance, as well as in our efforts toward faithfulness. What's not expected is that we be successful in all things. And we should never understand a life that values success as one oriented to money, or power, or fame, or things. Those are mere occasional side effects of some forms of success, and not others. But faithfulness of the right sort should be its constant companion.

So when something doesn't work out as you had hoped, don't despair. Stay faithful to your vision of service and be ready to adapt and adjust to find the next iteration or version of that vision, which may succeed in ways you never even imagined.