Success and Balance
Teri Hatcher, in “Burnt Toast,” her memoir, has an interesting take on success, ambition, and balance. On p. 186, she comments on how society encourages ambition and we are rarely told to slow down, and how laziness is considered to be much worse. She points out how laziness and ambition are 2 sides of the same coin: “if you are too ambitious, you spend all your time working and jockeying and competing and assessing your status and wanting more. If you’re too lazy, you spend all your time procrastinating and watching TV, shying from responsibility and feeling like a failure. But in both cases, you lose track of what’s important. You fail to balance wanting to excel with being happy with what you have. You fail to balance ambition and satisfaction.”
On p. 189, she has some interesting thoughts on losing. She states that ‘losing was the perfect opportunity to teach my daughter that things don’t always go your way, even when the odds seem to be in your favor. You can survive and move on. You can be generous and gracious and grateful for what you have, and losing doesn’t have to take anything away from you at all. Winning might augment a moment or time in your life, but losing doesn’t take anything away. ”
Furthermore, she states “you can’t be a winner or a loser without getting off your ass and doing something with your life. Doing nothing is being a loser. Never trying is being a loser. Putting yourself out there means you’re learning and growing and changing, and you might someday win. Not necessarily in the eyes of others, but in your own eyes. ”
She refers to a quote from a friend, who told her, “I’m proud of you for not wanting to lose.” She explains that the quote came from a successful businessperson whose family is equally successful and nice. It was what his mother told him and his siblings when they lost out on big opportunities. “Not wanting to lose means you care about effort, about working hard, about being your best, and maybe even about being the best, and what’s wrong with that? I remember a super-successful sports star telling me that he never wanted to win – he wanted to beat everyone. And at first that sounds awful, but when you think about it, it’s the opposite of awful. It’s the opposite of arrogant. It says – I’m ready to be responsible and work hard to be good. I don’t want to win just so I can say I won. I want to earn the right to be the best, and I’m willing to work my ass off to do it. That’s a good person, a person who doesn’t think they deserve everything, but feels that there is a direct relationship between the effort one puts in and the rewards one reaps.”
She continues, “I thought about how success is having friends who love and support you through the bad times so you can genuinely celebrate the good times. Success is being able to look at yourself in the mirror each morning knowing you’ve lived honestly, tried your best, and gotten to a place where you can look back and see a life you actually wanted to have.”