Writing before the era of political correctness, but surely intending to be gender-inclusive, Henry David Thoreau put it this way: "Men are born to succeed and not to fail," cheerily suggesting that success is a human birthright.

Were that to be true, how is one to explain the masses of men and women who consider themselves to be failures and, in the same author's words, "live lives of quiet desperation"?

Two clarifying points can be made here:

1. Success, in one form or another, is the universal goal of every living thing in the natural order, from cockroaches and crabgrass to the highest form of life. (That’s you, baby!)

2. Success is one of the more misunderstood concepts of human behavior.

The best way to define success is, perhaps, to define what it is NOT.

Success is NOT (necessarily): Being listed in "Who's Who," or knowing everything about what’s what, or winning an entry in the "Guinness Book of Records, "or being featured on "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous," or accumulating the most money, or stringing an alphabet soup of degrees and designations after your name, or beating the other guy (or gal), or being recognized by snotty headwaiters, or winning the approval of others, or leaping over tall buildings in a single bound, or being more beautiful than a centerfold in "Playboy," or having more machismo than the "Jock Of The Walk," or wielding more power than a medieval king, or making more loot than Bill Gates or the top pop artist du jour, or measuring up to a "standard."

As to that last criterion, I have a couple of problems with “standards.” Too often, their focus is on negative elements. For example, while I respect the "shalt nots" of the Ten Commandments, I find it easier to live with the New Testament admonition to “love thy neighbor as thyself.” The pertinent question that occurs is that if we truly loved (i.e., cared about) our neighbors, which commandment could we or would we choose to break?

Digression #1: After a lifetime of struggling unsuccessfully to match the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company's weight standards, I discovered that I was not (and never had been) actually overweight; I’m just three inches too short! :-)

Digression #2: Neither does success in one's occupation mean reaching goals set by someone else, or what you might call "(MBOPO" (Management By Other People's Objectives). An illegitimate offspring of MBO, MBOPO tends to produce only short-lived results, diminishing returns, subtle backlash and limited personal satisfaction. True leaders "manage" by inspiring willing action in others, knowing that people do best what they want to do, rather than what they "oughta-do-because" or "gotta-do-or-else."

Back to the subject: Winning and succeeding are different things, not necessarily interdependent, contrary to a pervasive American preoccupation with coming out ahead or being "Number One."

Coming in second or third is not a failure; the only failure is in not trying to come in first, IF that's what you wanted to do. If it was not, then failure means not having done as well as you had chosen to do beforehand.

Success doesn’t mean achieving perfection, either, because nobody alive today has ever done so; it is, literally, an impossible dream.

Well, then, if success is neither perfection, nor being on top, nor any of the other things listed above, what the heck IS it? (Thought you'd never ask!)

1. Success is meeting goals that YOU set for yourself because YOU want the benefits for YOU.

2. Success is closing or minimizing the gap between your potential and your performance, as YOU see them, in any field of endeavor.

If you're looking for a condensed, "fast-food" formula for success, here 'tis:

1. Find the best way of doing what YOU want to accomplish, then

2. Do everything the best way YOU know how.

When you have met these criteria you are as complete a success as anyone in history has been! (Name for me one heroic figure who has ever done better that his or her best!)

The emphasis on "you" in the foregoing formulae is no accident. Only "you-oriented" success will give you full and lasting satisfaction, even though it may not bring with it the trappings of celebrity.

Cutting to the choice (and the choice IS yours!), you are a failure only if you haven't done your best to minimize that performance/potential gap, as you see it!

You WERE born to succeed, and if you settle for that "life of quiet desperation," you've nobody to blame but (notso) good old you-know-who!