Do Others Fail if I Succeed?

I’ve been thinking about this topic a lot. There seems to be this mindset that your success comes at the expense of others. There certainly is truth to this mindset in some industries and some circumstances in life. For instance, I recently went to an MLS game, something I often do here in San Jose. The Earthquakes lost (they’re in the bottom three in our division). They failed and the other team succeeded. Both can’t win. Same would be true if you’re selling a limited resource. For instance, if you and the shop down the street both sell Product A to a limited customer case, one shop will sell Product A to a customer and that need is met at the loss of the other shop. This is all common sense.

But is this true across the board? Is this true in every industry and circumstance? Is success and failure a black-and-white pallet, is it a grayscale spectrum, or is it a rainbow of color?

Success itself is a subjective word. Since it’s subjective, you can go ahead and lay to rest the mindset that success and failure is black-and-white. You can probably come up with your own definitions of what it means to be successful, but for me personally, success looks like owning my time. That’s it. I don’t care about financial success outside of buying my time. I don’t need material things. I just need to own my time.

When people daydream about winning the lottery and all they would do with the money, I like to think that very little of my life would actually change. I’d still sleep in my used Tempur-pedic bed (yes, we bought our bed on Craigslist). I’d still drive normal cars and my old Vanagon. I wouldn’t go on a spending spree and fill my house with expensive stuff. I’d just buy my time. I’d buy time with my kids. I’d buy time to focus on my passions. I’d wake up everyday and decide what I want to give my time to. That’s success, to me.

Failure may be less subjective than success, though. At the highest level, we could define failure as a missing of the mark. We had a goal of X, and we missed it. At a micro-level, we feel the weight failure internally. What happens when we start feeling the sting of failure is we start to become dismissive, defensive, and divisive. We dismiss our own contributions to the failure, blaming all of the outside sources rather than our own talent, work ethic, or realistic expectations. We become defensive against the failure, fighting back with excuses and blame rather than just owning it. We become divisive against those who didn’t fail, even within our own team sometimes. Everyone has experienced failure at some point. And many still carry the pain of past failures.

Our past experiences with failure shape our relationship with success. We begin to see success as the opposite of failure, when they’re really not opposites, just different states of circumstances. They’re like humidity and ice - both made of water. Success and failure - both made of effort. Yet if we see success as the opposite of failure, then we see response to success as the opposite of the response to failure.

Where there is dismissiveness, there’s ownership. We love to own our successes. This leads to pride. Where there’s defensiveness, there’s offensiveness. Success longs to be repeated, and we begin to play offense and keep chasing success. When we play offense, the goal is to beat the defense. Therefore there has to be a loser - the failure of another. And the last part of failure is actually the same as success - divisiveness. I can’t succeed unless others fail.

I think this is one of the greatest lies you can believe. I don’t think success comes at the failure of another. We will all fail throughout our life, but we can also all succeed. When the rain falls, it doesn’t just fall on one mans house. And when the tide rises, all the boats in the marina lift. You’ve heard these cliches before. Failure and success are both very specific to the individual. Therefore your success is defined and decided by you. And your failures are yours, too.

Learn from your failures. Define your success. Don’t try to compete with others to be successful. This is especially true for creatives and artists.

Do others fail if I succeed? No. And if for some reason someone else has to fail for you to succeed, then you’re succeeding wrong.