I’ve spent the last several months with my head deep in a dictionary, editing THE WHIZBANG WORDBOOK, so excuse me if I’m a little definition-sensitive these days. But hear me out. This is important stuff.
How many of you have done this—set arbitrary goals that signal, in your mind, that you’ve become a success?
If I get a literary agent, then I’m a success.
If I get one book deal, then I’m a success.
And then you hit those goals, and suddenly, that definition of success gets tossed out the window.
No, one book deal isn’t successful! Two book deals would be!
And then you get those two deals. But again, it’s not enough to be deemed a success in your eyes.
So you compile an entire list of criteria for success.
A lead title!
A starred review!
Two starred reviews! Three! Four!
An Indies NEXT selection!
A Junior Library Guild selection!
A New York Times bestseller!
A Caldecott!!!!
The bar of success keeps inching higher. You are forever chasing it, feeling like a failure for not being successful!
But I’m here to tell you, YOU ARE A SUCCESS.
OK, I’m not telling you this just because *I* think you’re a success and I want to be all warm and fuzzy.
Let’s look at the WORD.
Notice that “success” is part of “succession”:
And that the meaning of succession is someone or something that follows another.
The Latin root of both words is succedere, which means to “come after or follow after.”
So all those goals you’ve lined up? And the ones you’ve already hit? They follow one after another after another and they’re the original definition of success—to continue to reach those goals and thus, form new ones.
You cannot say you’re not successful if you have conquered at least one goal on your list. You are.
The real meaning of being successful is forming goals, reaching them, and ascending to a new level, with loftier goals. As long as you are striving, you are succeeding.
Success is not stagnant. Success is always moving forward.
So FOREVER ONWARD, writers!
Here’s to being a SUCCESS—many times over!
Source : The Real Meaning of Success
