Problem

"The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it's the same problem you had last year."
John Foster Dulles

People often think that success means that you have no more problems to deal with. But the truth is that as long as you are really living life, you will always have problems to deal with. We are meant to deal with problems, it is the way that we continue to learn and grow. And if we are not learning and growing, then we are not really living. That is one reason to welcome problems, instead of trying to avoid them.

If we have a big goal, we are naturally going to run into big problems. If we have a small goal, we only have small problems to overcome. So, in a way, the more successful you are, the bigger problems you have had, and will continue to have. Those people with ambitious goals are by definition the most successful, but to have got there they had to deal with bigger problems than the rest of us. They solved those problems, acheived their goal, and are now ready to move on and attempt something else.

The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it's the same problem you had last year. If you have the same problems now as you did last year, then you haven't really gone anywhere. You haven't learned and grown enough to cope with those problems. And so you can't have acheived anything significantly different. If you have new problems this year, then you are successful because you conquered last year's problem and are now ready to work on this years. Because you have grown from last year's problem, you will find this one much easier than you would have otherwise.

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