How Does Success Taste?
Why do we refer to the sweet taste of success? It’s an odd phrase if you don’t really like sweet things. Perhaps when we talk about success we are actually trying to convince others that we are doing well. As we create reference points to understand each other we use metaphors. How else could we begin to explain how we feel and expect others to remotely get our point. Those common stories link us together, you could say they condition us. Back to that taste again and sugar usually comes to mind to represent anything sweet. Since sugar gets a pretty negative press we might need to update our reference points a bit. However linking success with salad for example might not do the trick. The green taste of success might not catch on so well.
The sound of silence is another one that conjures up a peaceful, maybe idyllic state to achieve. In our world is it ever truly silent? Even if there is no noise around us, what noise are we creating within ourselves. Quietening ourselves to experience silence is one thing. Getting others to understand how it makes us feel is a different matter. Linking sound with silence presets expectation limiting interpretation. The taste of silence does not begin to convey a feeling of peacefulness or serenity, or whatever silence might mean to you. Perhaps silence like space just is.
It’s Not The Taste That Counts
We eat with our eyes. Well it might be physically impossible but when we are hungry that’s what we do. Our conscious or sub-conscious conjures up those satisfying tastes that almost instantly makes us feel better. Still hungry we rush to the shops to get what we need to satisfy that urge. It’s probably the same with success. We need to tell others, we need affirmation maybe even adulation. Perhaps we should stop and really understand what that success means for us. Maybe we can’t explain it to the level that the feeling is worthy of.
Success is a feeling that each of us experience to different degrees. Maybe as we strive to tell others how success tastes for us we lose a bit of ourselves? After all, that brilliant roast chicken dinner we made last week was just a roast chicken to others. All the work that went into that coaching certification is a certificate lying on the desk. The pain, the effort, the flashes of brilliance that produces those outcomes is known only to each of us. We are maybe measuring our success against how our peers react instead of being happy with what we have achieved.
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