Success

When everything about you is wired to be a helper and a supporter and advocate you don’t always get to see or experience the fruits of your labor. 

Sometimes your efforts go unnoticed. 

Sometimes the seeds you plant won’t blossom until the people you’ve reached out to have moved out of your life.  They simply carry the seed with them until the right place and right time combine for them to understand what it is you gave them or did for them. 

Sometimes with the pace of life people take hold of what you offer and run with it, never realizing the effort you put into the contribution or that they didn’t express any kind of gratitude. 

We don’t help people because of the accolades.  We don’t expect a round of applause every time we do the right thing.  Often times the fact that we blend so seamlessly into the background of people’s lives is a sign that we’re doing the right thing and, because we don’t demand recognition or payment, we’re doing it for the right reason.

That doesn’t mean people who are wired to be care givers or who simply care don’t find themselves wondering if the things they do matter to people. 

All of my life I have fought to do the right thing.  Sometimes I fail.  Usually I succeed.  At all times I strive to make a difference—to speak for the voiceless and advocate for the powerless.  But because this is my calling, for lack of a better term, it comes with the knowledge that I may never know if I do make a difference because rarely do people like me get the recognition or expressions of gratitude.

And it’s not that we want these things beyond what our human nature drives us to desire.  Everyone wants their fifteen minutes, I suppose.  Human beings like it when our egos can be stroked and our genius can be recognized.  But for those of us who advocate and support and speak, recognition and gratitude aren’t really food for the ego.  Hearing these things is how we know we’re on the right track, that we’re doing the right thing, that our work is validated and someone finds it valuable. 

Now, for someone like me who works behind the curtain as I do with my writing and my blogging and my anonymous advocacy, I regularly find myself wondering if what I’m risking is worth the benefit of what I’m doing.  Do the things I write actually help people?  Are the things I blog about beneficial to anyone?  When I reach out to someone, is what I share beneficial to them?  Or do all of these things that I do from behind the veil of a pseudonym and the mystery of the internet just add to the clutter of the internet and leave a trail for some jerk to undo the non-Troy Comets me?

I know what is behind these thoughts.  It’s insecurity and anxiety.  There was a time I was so confident in my profession, in my work, and my call.  Not so much anymore.  And I know what the difference is:  When you do what I do in real life with people who actual move through your physical space, you have the benefit of seeing the difference you make whether it’s spoken about or not.  When you do what I do now on the internet it’s not so easy to judge your success rate.  I find myself watching the quantifiable markers.  Tweets, interactions, retweets, shares, etc. on social media and page visits and comments on my blog.  I watch marketing trends for my book.  I can even track how many pages of my book are read on any given day by people who use kindle.  What I forget is that these are just…numbers.  They aren’t signs of success.

I imagine it’s like those of you who are youtubers.  You’re driven to tally your views and subscribes and it helps you feel like a success.  But for those of you who vlog about real life stuff you know that making that connection with just one person out of the 20,000 who watched your video and needed to hear what you had to say—that one person is a measure of your real success, not the 19,999 others who simply watched your video. 

We really need to evaluate what we use as metrics of success in a culture that tells us more is better and high traffic means you are successful.  Mass consumption isn’t success. At least in work like I do.  My blog had nearly 100 views today.  That’s not success.  If my blog changed one person’s attitude, informed one person of an important fact, if I entertained one person through my blog, or drew attention to a solitary issue for a single individual—that’s success.

This post isn’t about fishing for praise.  This post is just a gentle reminder—if someone says or does something, offers you something, informs you of something you didn’t know or never realized—thank that person.  It feeds their soul and encourages them to keep going.  It’s simple positive reinforcement. 

And now…some of you know why I am constantly thanking you.