Success according to Merriam Webster dictionary is achieving a favorable or desired outcome.

As a single woman it can be easy to think that in the world’s eyes you aren’t successful because you aren’t married. After all isn’t success, marriage, kids, a home, and $. Now I am being silly, but I believe that we often define success from the world’s standards.

I will talk to a single woman and she might mention her successful career, or her ability to be successful in having a home, a great job, a great life, but she is unable to find success in dating.

And that last one is frustrating her. Therefore she feels overall unsuccessful or like a failure.

See the opposite of success is failure. We view success as winning, or achieving, for things to work out or go well. We view failure as losing, not gaining, for things to die or go wrong. But for as many things as you are “trying for” you often don’t create the desired outcome and so it can seem like you are doing a lot of failing. Losing weight; failing, dating; failing, relationship with friends; failing, getting to bed on time; failing, the list goes on and on.

Failure is success in progress. Albert Einstein

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. Winston Churchill

But the only way to not lose enthusiasm is to decide why you are continuing to put yourself out there and what success really looks like regardless of the outcome.

Women typically fear dating because they fear what failure would look like. They don’t want to imagine putting time and effort into a person for them to only be rejected in the end. They are so good at finding evidence that it doesn’t work out, that they think it will never work out and so they stop putting themselves out there. Their only option for success is if it works out. But you would have to open to failing time and again until you get the result you most want. It would help your brain if you knew that you could be successful regardless of the results.

This can also happen at work. You might be throwing yourself into work and don’t even know what the desired outcome is. Do you succeed if you get a pay raise, or promotion? You haven’t decided what success looks like and so you are chasing something illusive to try and feel successful. But what if it didn’t have to be like that?

No, you get to decide what results you are wanting and then create that success. But that would take you deciding ahead of time what success really looks like. And I encourage you to decide that success isn’t only if it works out.

I have determined that when I try something and it fails, it actually is successful if I learn and grow from it.

My son played basketball a couple weeks ago and they lost. He wanted to hang his head and feel defeated. I mean come on 8 year old basketball is pretty intense! But we had a great talk about how we don’t have to win for something to be successful. He can decide how he wants to show up in a game and then determine success off of those parameters.

So for basketball he can deem it successful if he:

is present and fully focused when out on the court (hands not in pockets, not off in a daze in la-la-land)

is encouraging to his teammates

is giving 100% effort

is not complaining about other team or refs

is working to improve his basketball skills

is creating fun regardless of the circumstances

Look at this list. Success is not did I win, it’s did I show up like this?

Creating this list (that is completely within your control) will help you create more success in your life. You get to feel successful even when you don’t win. This will totally trick your brain. This will throw you for a loop. This will get you evolving and changing and growing to become more of who you want to be.

Because think about my son. He walks away from the game regardless of the score or if they won or lost as successful because he is completely in control of his own success by those terms he created. You want to start doing this. You will want to think about what success looks like in dating, at work, with your family, with your ex, in regards to money, and time, and as many things as you can determine. Because when we set ourselves up for success the failures don’t sting as bad.

Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. Thomas Alva Edison

See often success is at the top of a mountain of failure. But if with each failure we still feel successful we are more willing to try again. That is what you want to do in many areas of your life.

I want you to decide what success during this season of life looks like. Define it in terms of what you can control regardless of the outcome. Decide who you want to be. Decide how you want to act. Think through your whys in as many areas as you can. And from that place celebrate success, celebrate failures, celebrate growth, celebrate who you are becoming and celebrate each and every season you experience.

Here is to creating success,

Angie