[aozer]

Dude I’m 30, live in a one bedroom apt, no girl, no kids, working a job I don’t even like. Some people would think I am a success because I have a graduate degree in computer engineering and make six figures, but my life has become so mundane and predictable that my apathy has reached an all time high. Sounds like you’re not doing so bad.

[WestRace]

Reading the Rudi guy taking OP so seriously making me lols. Anyone taking the OP seriously, you're a failure lols. The OP is making a joke out of you all lols.

[upstatedoc]

let it go, just let it gooooo

[NorCalAthlete]

Purpose is built, not found.

Success takes many forms - this may sound cliche or Buddhist or Zen or whatever, but water flowing downhill will get to the bottom eventually. A waterfall may get it there a bit quicker, but a meandering stream gets there all the same.

We live in the Information Age. There is ALWAYS someone smarter, faster, richer, better in some quantifiable, measurable way, that will pop up on our radar. Make your peace with it and work around it.

Perhaps for you, success takes the form of the process of building purpose. Perhaps your personal success is simply to never stop - even if it means slowing down to catch your breath.

To shift over to a boxing analogy, what matters isn’t always how hard you punch. It’s how hard you can take a punch and keep getting back up. Keep moving forward.

There’s no finish line to the race for self improvement. Just a lap counter that ends when we die. It’s like a jogathon where people say “I’ll give you $5 for every lap” vs a marathon with a set distance. If one guy runs 10 laps at a blistering pace and quits, it doesn’t matter if you were only on lap 5 when he finished if you keep going to 20 laps.

I’m not as eloquent as I’d like to be but I have a fairly stacked resume and I’ve done a lot of stuff others aspire to. You know what’s not on that list? Starting and running a successful business. Hell, I even started a thread here on it recently because I’m taking the next steps to try my hand at it. Maybe I’ll succeed, maybe I’ll fail and learn and try again. All I know is, I’m still moving forward.

Always Forward.

[M_Six]

If your rotting corpse isn't feeding worms, then you still have every opportunity to succeed. Ergo, failure is only possible from this very second moving forward. Setbacks are not failures, they're learning opportunities. Learn from them and drive on.