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30RF30Y: Savouring Success and Accepting Failure

Writer's picture: Liam XavierLiam Xavier
a still from a Jess Glynne performance as part of an event capture I was producing.
a still from a Jess Glynne performance as part of an event capture I was producing.

Well, this is a fun topic. Funnily enough, this topic and the Love one were a big part of why I wanted to write this series in the first place. Success and failure will occupy your mind at several points in life, but perhaps most when you're approaching a milestone age. If you couldn't tell already, I am!


I'm part of an interesting generation when it comes to success, failure and every limbo position in between. Being born in 1995, most would call me a young millennial but it is awkward enough of a year to occasionally slide into the persona and feelings of an ancient member of the Gen Z community (of which I am just 2 years too old).


I mention generations because I believe that our perception of success and failure is 80% nurtured learning and 20% unraveling madness when we discover that we're capable of thinking for ourselves—the horror! In my case and the case of the vast majority of people I know in their mid-late twenties and slightly older, success and failure is a defining factor of our happiness. Not that we wish it were but through parental encouragement (and/or pressure), societal expectation, and a deep-rooted sense that there is only one acceptable route in life (school-university-successful job-marriage-kids), it is hard not to repeatedly feel like a failure.


As a creative, it was a slowly boiling cauldron of contradictions. I desperately wanted to be a writer/producer - perhaps even a director - and I also wanted a relatively quiet life with the possibility of a family. The partner has always been more important than children but my opinion on having kids changes with the state of the world on a daily basis. Success under these conditions was hard to envision because I had a societal view over all of it:


  • Success in creativity = a major publishing deal or a 6-7 figure Netflix deal or a high-paying corporate job (with the condition that I give up on the unstable career aspirations of a writer).

  • Success in love = a long-lasting, without-flaws, picket fence relationship that eventually becomes marriage and a family and stems from a Hallmark Christmas romcom.

  • Success in health = ripped, Zac Efron abs, sharp jaw, running 5k a day, eating a set amount of calories a day, absolutely no oat and raisin cookies from Subway and the ability to do a quadruple backflip into a pirouette.


Naturally, none of these have occurred so far and have instead rippled through my body, spreading insecurities and perfectionism from head to toe. Something that is, I'm sure, a relatable fact for many. I've even noticed that Gen Z seemed to be getting to this point earlier; people aged 22-23 terrified that they're still a virgin, still single, still unemployed and believing they've passed the point of no return. There's truly nothing more awakening than seeing these posts and, like a fed up grandad, exclaiming "oh nonsense, you're SO young, wait til you get to my age". At which point, you realise other older people would say the same thing about you and that the biggest thing you should be doing right now is defining and chasing success for yourself. Being sad you do not fit other peoples expectations or targets is perfectly understandable but entirely useless.


I have a separate article on my experiences as a writer/producer across the last 10+ years, but my experience with success and failure as a topic is broader. Like I said, success has felt like more than just career aspirations, which means failure has always had larger targets to victimise me with.


From my own perspective, I've always been on a slightly nauseating theme park ride between success and failure. A metaphorical Stealth Rollercoaster of inconsistent dips and heights that always leaves me feeling slightly unnerved by what's around the corner, which in itself only creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. While it is true that this up-and-down fluctuation is entirely common and almost canon, if you don't approach it with the right mindset, you can quickly reduce the length of your success and prolong the failure or, rather, the low points.


As such, I've learnt to follow the oldie goldie that is to savour the highs and appreciate the lows. Certainly easier said than done but success can be a fleeting feeling that has to be maintained or continously fought for. Once you get it, you can celebrate it, savour it and then it's a case of understanding that it is not an immovable achievement, but to also not get wrapped up in the fatalistic mindset of "when is it going to all fall apart". This is where I'm still learning. Even now, as I get ready for 30, and am at a point where I feel that success is a word that is slowly applying to different areas of my life again, my brain is doing its best to cut through the noise of positivity. In fact, as I wrote that last sentence, my brain said - and depressingly you'll find some of those closest to you might think - that success is a word too strong, again due to the pre-determined societal definitions.


In reality, success and failure are incredibly vast as labels. Success can be comparative, it can be in more place than one: success that your blog is gaining traction, success that your friend just scored a literary agent. Success can overwhelm us and become a crow picking at skin, telling us that there is always bigger, there is always better. I learned this very early on when I had 2 strong years, readership growing, authority increasing, opportunities abundant. Then when I dropped down, every success from then on became a matter of comparison. As a literal example, an author I loved responded to one of my reviews and said it was one of her favourites but then down the line, one of my friends had a poem adored by Ariana Grande. By comparison, my success suddenly felt smaller but without comparison, it's still incredibly exciting. I had a much quiter year and, again, any success was then a matter of "oh but last year, you did this", "last year, your engagement was x%", or "oh but X just got featured in the new york times", "X got a publishing deal", "X is on the telly".


At which point, it's very difficult to get out of the cycle of negativity without first rewiring the brains perspective on success. I've never been very good at that but one thing that has helped - annoyingly - was going through 3 awful years of consistent lows, consistent fallbacks and also some spicy weight gain to top it off. All of a sudden, any positive thing that happens is a miracle. All of a sudden, things that I use to call inconsequential or unimpressive compared to what I used to have or do are omens of an improving life.


That's all it is: success and failure are too boundless and immeasurable to rest our entire happiness on. Success is not what other people tell us it is or even what we say it is sometimes. It is a million expressions of happiness and satisfaction and, while I'm not there yet myself, I am working towards seeing this as the truth and working hard towards the life I want to live without demonising any low point as an inherent failure.


Every day is a success if - to paraphrase Dumbledore - you only remember to shine a light on it.



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