This is precisely the point I’m trying to make; “only you know whether you have tried hard enough.” Apparently, I’m broken somehow, because my point is that I *don’t*.

When you’ve tried all the different ways you know how, and the only thing you can think of is to try the *same* ways again (as in, sometimes there isn’t a special way to get something done, but you just have to hammer home your point), when can you say you’ve repeated the same thing enough. Wooden’s examples all come with well-defined end-points for the game’s outcome. This is why he can say “even though they lost the game, they were successful.” This becomes considerably harder when you can’t decide whether the game is won or lost, because you don’t know whether it has ended. I know the success isn’t defined by the win or the loss, but it helps to know whether you should still be playing.

Yes, but with sufficient he means that you have done everything you can do. Not everything needed to ensure results but just everything period. In other worde the criterium for succes is within you: only you know wether you have tried hard enough. The result of this effort is completely unrelated to this. If you listen to the TED talk he even speaks about how on occasion his guys have ‘won’ according to him but have less points on the board than their opponents.

@Cédric:
Often times the day-to-day decisions of politicians are more so determined by how they can stay in the good graces of public opinion that day. The worst thing is: to be an idealist politician, you would need to do this maybe even more so than non-idealists; if you’ve fallen from grace, there’s nothing you can do anyhow. The first precondition for any political result is that you participate in the politics. If you’ve lost the camera, you no longer participate.

Although I now understand your point better, I think that your view is rather pessimistic and dark. I do see the shallowness of many politicians who only live for the daily oneliner, but I disagree that the media forget the long term view of events. There are enough journalists that keep a long term view of events, but I guess you have to know where to look.

Moreover, I believe that from following the news on a daily basis, we can judge for ourself what kind of person a politician is. After all, his or her day-to-day decisions are determined by their beliefs and ideas.

The question to the answer whether you are becoming an annoying nag, is not in what you want to accomplish, but in how you choose to do it. If something is important enough for you, you should keep it at (maybe only change your tactic). In other words you will be fighting windmills…. Succes (as defined by mr Wooden) will come with the action and not with the result (Aristoteles anyone?). As long as you define succes – and as such your happiness- based just on the results you obtain you will be forever held hostage by the crowds….

@Cédric:
I see where I was unclear. When I repeat the one-issue point, I say what I mean more precisely. I’ll put it more to the point: Politicians are assessed per-issue, per-day. Every day they vote for or against some issue, they will be assessed on that one issue. I could easily be misunderstood here. I’m certainly not complaining about politicians being under close watch from the media, et al. The problem I have, is that those media seem to have lost the long-term view of things. “If there was an issue last month, we’ll cordially forget about that, because we can’t really expect our audience to still remember, so today, we’ll re-assess everyone on every single issue.”
This point is subtly different from what you say about reacting to current events. In today’s politics, I see very little direction in what politicians do. In your terminology: I can’t tell what their beliefs and ideas *are*. Some are very clear in their politics, but those are mostly the ones on radical sides. In that part of the political spectrum where I consider voting, I only hear people “listening to the voters” and not commenting until “after the debate.” Usually the comment after the debate is that there needs to be more debate.
My point was that I feel that politicians don’t dare stick their neck out for ground-breaking change, because the first steps you take in the direction of radical change are always unpopular (otherwise, how radical can it be?).

@Simon:
Nope, I’m not asking for divine inspiration, I’m asking for proper understanding. What I mean by understanding, I will probably have to blog about some time soon, because I felt like writing something about that in response to how Robert used the term ‘answers’ in his Genesis vs. Evolution piece.

@Robert:
What I’m looking for is a perspective in which the work is put into the community, but the measure of success, or – if you will – gratification, comes from within. I interpret Wooden’s definition as saying you don’t need to succeed in terms of the effects on the community, as long as you gave it your best. My doubt is about how you know when you’ve given your best and failed (and are now an annoying nag), or whether you should press on even though results so far have been unpromising.

What interests me is that you do all the effort to find a more individual definition of success than Alain de Botton’s and in the end it still comes down to the effect your effort has on the community. I have not watched the John Wooden talk yet but I think he means that the effort counts and not the result.

Thanks for the article, it is very recognizable but doesn’t it come down to this well known proverb/prayer:

Lord, give me the strength to accept what I cannot change, the power to change what I cannot accept and the wisdom to determine which is which?

What I don’t understand is the difference you describe between the power to raise a common ground or standard, and the one-issue-politics. Maybe my confusion is born in the unclear definition of the latter: you probably don’t mean one-issue-parties, like the Party for Animals or Senior’s party, do you? You are referring to politicians that live by the opinion of the day, that don’t act but react to the media, right?
If so, then wouldn’t you agree that a politician’s reaction to current events is always colored by his personal set of believes and ideas? And if the politician is successfull in translating his believes and ideas to the public, and gathers support for his view of the world, this means that his opinion has been transformed in a common ground or standard.

So what you describe as two different things, I rather see as two necessary points in the law/policy making process.