I recall seeing this question in one of the social networking sites some time ago. In contemplating this philosophical question I found that the answer can be gleaned by rephrasing the question - if I could always succeed at anything I attempted...what would I want in life? Well, like most people I would want good health and long life for my family and myself, a successful career, lots of money so I could buy anything I wanted, sail the world, play the Old Course at St. Andrews with Tiger Woods and beat him, and of course, world peace.
What's wrong with this picture? Well, we all know that a world with no diseases, no war and people buying and consuming anything they want, whenever they want will eventually lead to a rapid depletion of the world's natural resources, which is a sure recipe to cause the implosion of the earth's ecosystem and destroy every living being on the planet.
If the above is true, I'm sure most of us would not want success to be guaranteed. Why would we want the world to self-destruct? We learn from our failures and become better human beings.
According to Deepak Chopra, "success is the continual expansion of happiness and the progressive realization of worthy goals in spite of setbacks that may occur from time to time from which we learn and emerge even stronger." He goes on to say, "success is not only being able to enjoy every day in what we do to ourselves for our own gratification but also what we do to make the lives of our less fortunate fellow beings around us just a little less arduous."
