There's an article about what determines, 'success'. Here's my contribution..
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posted by The Eclectic Warrior @ 2:27 pm
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Peter Brock is a motor racing legend in Australia. I watched him race every year at Bathurst, getting up at 7.00 am to revel in his sporting wizardry. Last month, he died in a racing accident. 'Brocky' was affectionately known as 'Peter Perfect', more for his flawless racing than any other reason. But soon, the moniker jumped from the sporting realm, and into Brocky's personal realm. And no doubt, without his agreement. However, cracks appeared in the Brock facade, and this prompted one of Australia's most misguided journalists and reporters, Derryn Hinch, to publish an expose on the 'real' Peter Brock. He hit on a couple of issues I feel passionate about, and decided to Blog....
News.com.au Gotcha Blog:
I can’t hack Hinch. The bastard makes a career out of indecency, sensationalism and these types of gutless, spineless attacks on the dead. Yeah, Hinch is just as low as the people he defames.
But, here’s the clincher. We need low-lifes like Hinch. Our public perceptions are moulded by the self-interest of the media. Much like the way we secretly revel in the muck Hinch rakes up. However, I’m not a big believer in either ‘spin’ or dishonesty. So Hinch’s revelations therefore, have some merit.
Domestic violence is insidious. I know. I lived it for 10 years, then lived the consequences of it over the remainer of my lifetime. It needs airing, and perpetrators need to be treated (notice I didn’t say ‘punished’). People who perpetrate domestic violence (and let’s get this fact straight, both male AND female), need to be stopped, then treated. Hinch shows us that a lifetime of getting away with domestic violence leaves a perpetual and distasteful legacy for generations to come. Those that helped cover Brock’s reputation are as guilty as Brock himself of that legacy.
The second point relates to Hinch’s propostion that it’s ‘safer’ to disparage the dead than those living. Well, as a firm believer of ‘what goes around, comes around’, Hinch will want to be bloody careful that he doesn’t slip. His fall could be mightier than any whom he has carved up. However, he touches on a certain truth. Again, this is born from personal experience. Perpetrators of abuse become VERY expert in plying their trade and ensuring tracks are covered, threats linger, webs of lies and deceit are laid, and accountability and responsibility are deferred. They have rights under law, and they become acutely expert in their utility. Abusers have a vested interest in protecting themselves, and given that the vast majority of perpetrators are victims of abuse themselves (thus the reason I say they should be ‘treated’ 
), they have the intense wherewithall to ensure they protect themselves, and their errant reputations and behaviour, from further discomfort. So, death appears a VERY good habour in which to lay anchor and reflect on truth. For both the living and the newly deceased, I should say. I am personally the victim of domestic violence and serious abuse. My perpetrator, a close family member, has woven an intricate and almost flawless web of deceit, lies, fabrication, smoke screen and manipulation, to ensure I could never come out in public and accuse her without transgressing laws of defamation. However, she also has months to live from cancer (what goes around...), so whether I am believed or not, I shall, as empathetically as possible to those innocents around her, like her son and husband, disclose her abuses of me some time after her funeral. So, Hinch has a point. And to those who may think I am perpetrating the same cowardice as him, I defer to the point of ‘core motivation’. I seek justice, Hinch’s motivations perhaps need to be further explored.
Lastly, there is the issue of besmirching a dearly loved, public figure. Well, I liked Brock because of my perceptions and knowledge of him as a good man. Now that Hinch has further educated me, and with solid journalistic evidence I must say, I feel thankful that I am not now honouring someone who had me thinking hew was something that he was not.
So, I was confused at how to best describe Hinch. Brock is a little easier. He was an abuser who ‘got away with it’, and was able to perpetrate and protect himself like all abusers do. And he lived a life of fame, popularity and respect that he was otherwise not entitled to. Similarly, that equates to Hinch, perhaps.
And a final note to Hinch, 'If you lay down with dogs, you are likely to catch fleas'…
posted by The Eclectic Warrior @ 12:16 pm
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Married with children. I'm a professional, living a normal life in suburbia.
I am a 'leadership facilitator'. I started working with the supervisory level of management, and have been facilitating management and leadership at the middle and upper levels for the last three years.
Much of my work cuts across the personal development realm, where the questions of happiness, success and 'self actualisation' often arise.
Getting into leadership issues on a daily basis has distinctly led me to the qualititive and quantitive issues in defining success. Indeed, when facilitating with students and leaders, I find myself sharing and discussing not so much the achievements of sporting, civic, political, social and celebrity successes, but of the lessor fashionable, and often unquantifiable, issue of a more common definition of 'personal success'.
In one session a couple of years ago, we talked about what constitutes 'personal success'. One individual was very quick to highlight the, 'he who dies with the most toys, wins!', mantra, which significantly rattled another individual who shared an enlightening and refreshingly different attitude to what constitutes personal success.
This individual cited the case of his next-door-neighbour, who, as a boy, suffered all forms of serious abuse at the hands of his direct family. This young boy grew into a highly troubled teen and adult, with forays into crime, drugs and life dysfunction, earmarking his descent into the enevitable life cycle that almost always ends in abject tragedy. The student told how he lost track of his neighbour, only to find him several years later. What he found, he remarked, set his benchmark for what he now constitutes 'success'.
This individual was now a full-time employed 'chicken catcher'. He had weekend and holiday custodial visits from his two children from an estranged relationship, lived in a rented, fibro cottage. He had little possessions, and was living week-to-week. However, he had not taken drugs for several years, was in regular counselling to help him come to terms with his life, had never abused his wife or children as he had witnessed in his family all his life, and was quietly helping individuals with similar histories turn their lives around. In the morning, he sit's outside and looks into the day with a sense of thanks that he was alive, and was in no way a reflection of the life he witnessed and lived. In his words, "The example for my life was my family's treatment of me and their circumstances. I decided that was to change with me. I have raised myself above their tragedy. I am at peace with what I've achieved, in the face of what I have suffered, and if I achieve nothing more from this point on, I have succeeded in changing my fate. I am a success".
And so he is. 'Successful' is to seek to achieve above apparent enevitability, against criticism and discouragement. Success is achievement against the 'now' or the status quo, and at whatever level that may be. To make an improvement, to declare and attempt achievment of a goal, to attain a level higher than your circumstances, and in the end, to be at peace with your circumstances, whatever they may be. Success cannot be balanced against another's perceptions or circumstances. Success is personal. To try to compare one's success against another is fruitless, unproductive, and will eventually and enevitably disappoint. This leads to unhappiness and anger, and neither emotion equates with life success.
True success, as I have had the privelege to discover, is the mark of a person's own expectations and achievements, regardless of any other's.