A couple of months ago, I asked you not to fear failure, saying that embracing failure — or at least the possibility of failure — was essential to success. But, of course, in the end the goal is to succeed, and fear of failing isn’t the only thing that keeps us from succeeding.

I speak from experience here. Six or seven years ago, I was the picture of success — a straight-A graduate student, top of my class, a job I loved, a relationship that I was happy in, the whole enchilada. And then, those successes started slipping away. Nothing obvious at first, but gradually I found myself stuck in a rut academically, my relationship dissolved, things just weren’t going my way. I wasn’t failing, per se, just losing my grip on the successes I had won.

In the last couple of years, I’ve been reassessing some aspects of my life, trying to figure out what had happened so I could rebuild. To some extent this has worked well — I have a job I love (although I need to develop it into a career, not just a job), I have a book coming out in my academic field, I’m writing quite a bit, and most importantly I have a new relationship that is going strong. To get here, I’ve had to figure out what I was doing wrong in the years in between, where I had lost my footing, and I think I’ve figured out a thing or two in doing so.

If you’re not reaching the kind of success you imagine in the areas that area important to you, one or more of the following things might well be true of you, too:

1. You don’t have a goal. A lot of time we find ourselves “spinning our wheels”, struggling through a day-to-day routine that isn’t getting us anywhere because we don’t know where we want to go. Sometimes we had goals when we set ourselves on a particular path, but we’ve changed along the way and those goals are no longer that important. Sometimes we simply did what was expected of us without ever stopping to think about what we eventually wanted to accomplish for ourselves. Whatever the case, figuring out what your goals are and, just as importantly, whether your current actions are helping to achieve them, is important.

2. You don’t have a vision. Setting goals is important but isn’t enough to drive you to the finish line; it’s important, too, to be able to imagine yourself as the achiever of your goals. How will you feel, what’s the payoff, why is it worthwhile to follow these goals and not some other ones? If goals are the end result of a journey, your vision is the fuel to get you there.

3. You don’t have a plan. If goals are your destination and a vision is your fuel, your plan is the map to get you there; without a plan, you have no idea what immediate steps to take to achieve your goals. Planning means taking stock of the resources you have, the resources you need, and the steps you have to take to put those resources into action. The world is full of people with goals they have never accomplished because they didn’t have a plan — don’t you be one of them.

4. You’re too certain. Too much certainty creates inflexibility. If you’re sure that your plan is correct, and refuse to accept the possibility of error, you may well find yourself stuck when an unexpected change comes about, or when your plan takes you in an unexpected direction. However strong your plan and however sure you are of your goals, make room for periodic reassessment.

5. You’re not certain enough. At the same time, too little certainty will paralyze you. If you refuse to take a step because you aren’t positive it will move you towards success, you won’t make any better progress than if you had no goals at all. Keep your eyes open and be willing to change, but have faith in yourself, too.

6. You don’t learn from your mistakes. A lot of people take their mistakes as signs of their unworthiness. They take setbacks as proof that they were never meant to achieve anything in the first place, and that they were stupid to even try. Mistakes are crucial to success — if we take the time to analyze them and learn from them. Even when they bar us irrevocably from attaining a goal, the lessons we learn from our mistakes help us to make new and better goals.

7. You reject outside influences. A lot of people see the influence of others as a weakness, or worse, a restriction or even “pollution” of their innate creativity. This is, in a word, hogwash. We are first and foremost social beings, none of whom has ever accomplished anything without the help of others. Welcome and accept other perspectives on your strengths and weaknesses, your successes and failures. Accept help graciously when it’s offered. This doesn’t mean you should take every piece of advice offered you, but you should listen seriously and openly and weigh carefully the input of others. And learn from their mistakes, when you can.

8. You worry about being copied. Often we close ourselves off from other people not because we’re afraid that they will influence us but that we will influence them, that our brilliant ideas will be taken up by someone else and no longer be solely ours. So we avoid sharing our passions, and spend our energy jealously guarding our “secret” rather than simply moving forward. In the end, we turn our passions into burdens that become difficult to carry instead of a joy.

9. You use up your reserves. When I’ve found myself at my lowest points, it’s always been for lack of a reserve — whether of money, of time, or most crucially of energy. In part this was the fault of inadequate planning and over-certainty — I should have reassessed my situation more realistically before exhausting my resources — but whatever the cause, it’s a dangerous place to be. A mistake that could be easily recovered from under normal circumstances becomes overwhelming when you’re too broke or too exhausted to respond adequately. Keep track of where you are financially, materially, and emotionally before you find yourself too worn down to continue.

10. You fear success. Forget fear of failure, it’s fear of success that kicks us the hardest. It’s the darnedest thing, too — the kind of thing that you don’t imagine possible, until one day you realize that you really don’t know what to do with yourself if you ever accomplish your goals. On the other side of success is the unknown, and believe it or not, the unknown is often scarier than the known world of struggle and unfulfillment this side of success. When I realized this, one night as I drifted unhappily to sleep, it jerked me straight up in my bed!

My father, an avid collector of seemingly random quotes, is fond of saying that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. (I’ve never had the heart to ask him why he keeps saying this….) At some point, you have to stop doing whatever you’re doing and figure out why you’re doing it, especially if it doesn’t seem to be getting you where you want to be. When you do, I think you’ll find that at least one of the above applies to you. Whatever your reasons, though, the important thing is to realize that it’s in your nature neither to be a failure, nor to be a success, that success is something we make rather than something that happens to us — and when you realize that, you can start to make the changes that move you from “insanity” to success.

幾個月前，我讓你《不要害怕失敗》，告訴你要擁抱失敗——或者至少擁抱失敗的可能性——對成功來說，這是必要的。但是，當然了，我們最終的目標是要取得成功，而害怕失敗也不是阻止我們成功的唯一障礙。

現在我來說說自己的經歷。大概六七年前，我是很成功的——我是全優畢業生，班里的第一名，有一份自己喜歡的工作，有一段令人愉悅的愛情，就是一整個安琪拉達（意指很幸福）。然后，情況開始下滑。最初一切并不明顯，但我漸漸發現自己在學術上停滯不前，我的親密關系破裂，所有的事情都不由我掌控。就其本身而言，我并不是失敗，只是在已擁有的成功上失去了掌控權。

此后的幾年，我一直在反思自己生活的方方面面，試著找出哪里出了問題，好讓自己能重新來過。從某種程度上來說，它很有效——我擁有一份自己喜歡的工作（雖然我得把它發展成為一個職業，而不僅僅是一份工作），我即將出版一本自己學術領域的書，已經寫了不少了，最重要的是我有了一份趨向穩定的感情。說到這，我得指出自己在那兩段時間中做錯的事，那使我失去了成功地位，我想我已經提到過了其中的一件了。

如果你還沒有在你認為重要的領域中取得成功，那么你至少符合下面的一種情況：

*你沒有一個目標。很多時候，我們發現自己“轉動輪子”，終日和時間賽跑，卻沒有去到任何地方，這是因為我們不知道自己想去哪。有時候，我們已經在前進的道路上設立了自己的目標，但一旦我們改變了自己的方向，那些目標就不再重要了。有時候，我們只是簡單地去做那些自認為渴望的事，卻沒有停下來考慮自己真正想要的是什么。不論在哪種情況下，也不論你現在的行動對實現目標是否起作用，指出你的目標是很重要的。

*你沒有一個遠景。設定目標是很重要，但這還不足以使你去達到它。設想你已經在目標上取得成功同樣重要。你的感覺怎么樣？回報是什么？為什么值得跟隨這些目標而不是其它的？如果目標是一場旅行的最終結果，你的遠景就是讓你達到那的燃料。

*你沒有一個計劃。如果目標是你的終點，遠景是你的燃料，你的計劃就是讓你到那的地圖。沒有計劃，你就不知道眼下要做什么去達到你的目標。計劃意味著儲存你所擁有的和所需要的資源，以及那些把這些資源轉化為行動的步驟。這個世上有太多有目標卻從未實現的人，是因為他們不曾有一個計劃——別讓你自己成為他們中的一員。

*你太固執。太多的肯定會造成僵化。如果你肯定你的計劃是正確的，并且拒絕接受錯誤的可能性，當預期以外的情況發生時，或當你的計劃把你帶到一個你不期望的方向時，你會發現自己陷入了困境。不論你的計劃多么強，也不論你對自己的目標有多肯定，都要為重新考慮預留余地。

*你不夠肯定。同樣的，太少肯定會讓你氣餒。如果你因為不確定是否能成功就拒絕向前邁一步，那你就不會比完全沒有目標更有進展。保持你的雙眼睜開，并且愿意改變，但同時也要對自己有信心。

*你沒有從錯誤中吸取教訓。許多人都認為錯誤是毫無價值的跡象。他們用挫折證明自己一開始就不打算取得成功，同時也證明他們愚蠢到要去嘗試。錯誤是成功的關鍵——如果我們花些時間去分析它們并從中學習的話。即便當錯誤不可避免地禁止我們達到目標，我們從錯誤中吸取的教訓也能幫助我們設定一個新的更好的目標。

*你拒絕外部的影響。許多人把其他人的影響看作是一個弱點，一種錯誤，一種限制，甚至是一種對他們與生具來的創造力的一種“污染”。總之就是一派胡言。我們首先是社會人，沒有一個人可以完全不要他人的幫助就能獲得成功。歡迎并接受他人對你優缺點和成功失敗的評述。優雅地接受他人的幫助。這并不代表你要接受所有的建議，但是你要認真而公開地傾聽，并仔細斟酌。可以的話，從他人的錯誤中學習。

*你擔心被復制。經常，我們會讓自己和他人保持距離，并不是因為擔心他人會影響自己，而是擔心自己會影響他人。我們害怕自己出色的點子被他人占有，不再僅僅屬于我們。因此，我們避免分享自己的激情，并且花精力謹慎地保守我們的“秘密”，而不是簡單地往前走。最后，我們把自己的激情變成一種很難被歡樂所代替的負擔。

*你耗盡了儲備。當我發現自己處在最低谷時，這總表示缺乏儲備——無論是金錢還是時間，或者是最關鍵的能源。在某種程度上來說，這是計劃不足和過度肯定的后果。——在耗盡我的儲備以前，我要對現狀重新做一次更實際的評估。——無論如何，這都是危險的情況。一個在正常情況下可以很容易被糾正的錯誤會在你精疲力盡不能對它作出適當反應的時候變得勢不可擋。在你覺得情況太壞而不能繼續以前，要在財務上、物質上和情感上保持跟蹤。

*你害怕成功。忘記對失敗的恐懼之后，對成功的恐懼最使我們受傷。這也是件最可恨的事。你不太可能會想到這類事，直到有一天，你真正意識到，如果你達到了所有設立的目標，你將無事可做。成功的另一面是未知，不管你相信與否，未知都比現實世界中的斗爭和未達到成功更可怕。一天晚上，當我不開心地漸漸入睡時，一想到這些，我就猛地從床上坐了起來！

我的父親，喜歡收集一些看似隨機的格言。他喜歡說的一句話就是，瘋狂就是總是重復相同的事卻期望有不同的結果。（我從沒有用心問過他為什么老是這么說……）某個時候，你得停下任何你在做的事，想一想你為什么要這樣做，特別是在你做的事并沒有讓你達到目標的時候。一旦你這樣做了，我想你將會找出至少一條上面說的情況與你相符。不論你的理由是什么，最重要的是你要明白，你的本質并不是要成為一個失敗者或成功者，成功是要爭取的，它不會自動發生在我們身上。一旦你意識到這些，你就能開始做出改變，這將會促使你從“愚蠢”走向成功。