The Formula for Failure

"I can't give you a surefire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time."

-- Herbert Bayard Swope

We all want to be liked. Odds are, though, not everyone will like you 100% of the time. Trying to get that longed for 100% likeability rating will not only lead to failure, it'll also drive you crazy!

Better to have a few trusted advisors, whose opinion you highly value and whose feedback you trust. And still, even they won't always be pleased with you! I'm sure you're familiar with the old saw, "Opinions are like assholes -- everyone's got one and most of them stink!" Really the only asshole, I mean opinion, that you truly need to be concerned with is your own.

In fact, success comes much more easily if you focus not upon opinion at all, be it your own or others, but rather upon the task at hand. You do your best, and let the proverbial chips, fall where they may. You remain true to your original intent and modify your vision as called for by reality.

Simply put, it is your calling, your vocation that is important. It is your choice that matters. It is your path to walk. People who will give you their opinion most readily are usually people who have strayed form their own path to comment upon yours. And in so doing, they are hurting themselves much more than they are helping you.

So, just for today, say to hell with them all! Do what you are meant to do. Do it well; do it joyously. And when your head plops on the pillow tonight, dream sweet dreams of success.