Permission to Succeed

I hit a moment Friday night when I left work 2 hours after I intended to. The reason: at 1615, my boss brought me a presentation which I had created to make to executive management, one he had a week at least. The verdict: it was lacking two things, and therefore we couldn't move it on for review prior to presenting it.

As I drove away, having put something together, my frustration bubbled over in the car. I've been here before, done this before - the whole "Get something together because it's your job but you can't do anything with it". In a real way, it feels like I'm living the same day over and over again at different jobs.

But then a thought rose to the top this morning, as I continued to replay the tape of the whole experience in my head: What am I doing here?

Not in the sense of this job (Been down the "Let's do something different RIGHT NOW!" path. That didn't go so well), but in the sense of my life. I constantly seem to be putting myself in the position of being a worker without decision making power or ability. The fact that more often that not I seem to let it happen in my personal life doesn't help matters either.

And then, floating down gently from where I put it two weeks ago, the thought came down "Why do you not give yourself permission to succeed?"

Permission to succeed? Seems axiomatic, doesn't it? That's the point - we don't go about our life with the intent to fail. Do we?

Success is scary. Striving to succeed means you make a commitment to something, and let other things go. It means that you may have no evidence that you will succeed except for the belief in you. Success means you are constantly trying to move forward, slowly or imperceptibly at times, but forward nonetheless. It means that you grasp that you are the one who has to do this: no-one can (or will) do this for you.

And that is scary. It is far easier to slip into the mode of just showing up, doing what's required of you, and going home - except when the realization gnaws at you that you are capable of more - in my case, than of arguing the case of need for failure rates of quarterly projects.

But one has to get permission from one's self. Otherwise (as I've discovered to my shame) you spend endless amounts of time and energy working yourself up to it only to say "No, I don't really deserve that. I should just be content."

In a very real sense, I need to practice the concept of shinigurai - literally Japanese for "being crazy to die", the idea of leaping into the jaws of death. I need to be crazy - crazy to succeed. As my quote to the right says, "Common sense will not accomplish great things. Simply become insane and desperate (shinigurai arimasu)."

Elsewise, 20 years from now, I will still be preparing reports to be buried in files and forgotten.