What is Success

what are your measures of success?
At the end of your life, what measures of success do you expect you’ll still be clinging to
or proclaiming proudly?
…… If we’ve returned again and again to our work, if we’ve taken challenges rather than avoiding them, if we’ve known when to give up, when to change, when to open up, when to love… Well I for one will feel very successful
Margaret Wheatley, Prerseverance, p. 123

I think that as I have always had very clear ideas about what success looks like
very American
perhaps even very “male” ideas
of what makes a life, a person successful
a meaningful job
a title
a certain degree of affluence
but it has always been a bit more than that
it has been a matter of being one who makes things happen
who is in the mix
a participant
I am still in a position of some influence
I still have the title
And there is a side of me that still wants to run things
Control them
And yet
I do not have the same energy
And my organization does not need the same skill set it needed
12 years ago
Times have changed
I have changed
Now my great challenge is not making things happening
It is enabling and allowing others to make things happen
And to realize that this different style of leadership
A more passive leadership that is supportive and directive
Is still leadership
Now the challenge is in learning to give up some things
And take on new, but very different things
Now the challenge is to change, to open up
To be a presence of
Dare one say it?
Love and compassion
and to lead from
perhaps behind?
Well it’s a challenge
My natural instinct is to feel
Old
And useless
And wonder what my value is
And if I am still (or ever was) as success
Ah the challenges of
Growing……..
Mature?