My friend Henry thinks he’s a failure.  

Henry is a doctor, you see.

What? A doctor, you ask. That’s not my idea of a failure! Well it’s not mine either. It’s certainly not my mother’s.  My mother would have dropped me off at the orphanage if she had the slightest  chance of being able to trade me in for a doctor-son.

But back to Henry. You see, success is relative and largely a construct of your own mind.  For example, you may be the Heavyweight Champion of the World but if your dream is to be a ballet dancer then disillusionment  might sneak in.  That’s Henry’s problem.  Henry always wanted to be a show girl.  So what do you do?
In that case, success may just require a shift in values.

For example, you might work in accountancy firm in middle management, stuck in a dead-end position with little hope of a promotion. This is making you feel depressed, a failure. It's a simple matter of changing your goals to say, wanting to sit at home and play the sitar or being a table tennis champion or starting your own bagpipe franchise.

The secret is realising what makes you happy. If the answer is Money you're already in trouble. It ain’t the answer. Believe me. I’ve had money and lost it then won it again and although it was more fun being rich it was no sure path to happiness.  I’m not even going to go into it here. Trust me, you have to climb up on something high and look over that fence past that mighty dollar sign. Try this simple test: ask yourself, if you were given millions of dollars, enough so you would never have to worry about money - what would you do then? The answer is the key to your life, or at very least, the crummy job you should do. So say the answer is: sail around on a yacht all day. Okay let’s look at the options. Then how about working for a tour operator in the Greek islands? Sounds good huh? Too hard? Open a sailing shop - or join the Navy. Jesus, I’m not gonna inspire you as well as work out your goddamn life.