When we talk about success in business, we always say that it is not a sprint but a marathon: it is not about getting there fast, and the winner is not the fastest runner but the one who keeps running when everyone else has slowed down.
But success in life is not really about running straight ahead, throwing ourselves into a race that will be won by whoever has the most stamina.
In life we will not find straight lines with signposts. Sometimes we will have to choose which way to go, and sometimes, just as in relationships, we will reach dead ends where many people bang their heads against the same wall again and again.
In this maze of life, we sometimes need to know when to insist and persevere, and when it is smarter to turn back. As a saying that does the rounds puts it: “Sometimes it is better to turn back than to get lost along the way.”
As in any maze, you have to remember the path you took before, so you do not return to the dead ends or the corridors that lead nowhere. You have to keep trying different paths until you find the right one.
(Read: The 8 beliefs of successful people)
So success is not a race of speed or of endurance, but a race of intelligence that is not necessarily won by the most intelligent, but by whoever can remember the wrong turns and keeps trying new ways forward until finding the right one.
In life, as in a maze, every time we fail we lose time, and time is limited. But if we stay stuck for too long, we lose time just the same.
At other times we get trapped in a part of the maze where we cannot even find our way back to the starting point, but we have to keep moving: sitting down lets you rest, but it does not get you out of the maze.
And best of all, in life, as in mazes, we do not know whether we have taken the right path. We will only find out when the path leads us to the exit (success) or to a dead end, where we will have to look for other routes.
There are only two ways out of the maze (of succeeding in life):
Walk out through the exit when you can, or take a step back and try something different when you cannot. But standing still is certain death inside the maze.
Further reading
Featured image: Rurik, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
