Measuring Our Success
photo by flickr user tanakawho / CC BY 2.0
Guest post by Kim Wierman
How do we measure success? I guess that all depends on the goal and whether or not we achieved it. Makes sense, right? Sometimes, however, success can be measured by what we have learned along the way to reaching our ultimate goals. Using this philosophy (which I don’t claim in any way to be flawless) I believe that we can gain a measure of satisfaction and even happiness in knowing we have learned a good lesson and then doing something with that knowledge.
Thomas J. Watson said, “Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn’t at all. You can be discouraged by failure or you can learn from it, So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because remember that’s where you will find success.”
We started Waves of Gratitude two years ago and have been blessed with many learning experiences. We can honestly say we made some mistakes, but I don’t consider them to be failures in any way. We learned, we grew and we came out better. It has always been extremely important for us to step back after any setback and look at the lesson learned. Sometimes we had to work as a team to not let the discouragement take away from the fact that we now knew of one more way we could improve what we were offering and how to offer it.
The times we were most successful at turning setbacks into advancement was when we went back to the core of why we started Waves of Gratitude. We want for women to recognize by their very nature the beauty and abilities they have within themselves and to let that knowledge give them hope, strength, serenity, a sense of accomplishment, both mental and physical health, and above all gratitude.
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Cheryl Nordyke and Kim Wierman are the founders of Waves of Gratitude - a company that exists because of their belief that when life presents you with professional and personal difficulties, a strong foundation of gratitude can help turn those difficulties into opportunities. The owner’s resolve to build a future based on a foundation of gratitude is unwavering. The pair created an online store to give everyone the opportunity to “wear” powerful symbols of gratitude, jewelry and apparel made to personalize the concepts of hope, love, legacy, creativity, optimism, inspiration, confidence and awakening that make everyone beautiful inside and out.
