in America. She was featured on ABC recently, not only for being the nation's oldest teacher, but also because she continues to approach her craft with creativity and diligence. Lovingly referred to as "Granny," Zhelesnik uses innovative strategies to teach the preschoolers at the Sundance School in New Jersey where she has worked for the last 15 years, such as baking banana bread to talk about the letter "N," as it appears twice in the word banana. "We'll soon do 'g' for 'gingersnaps,' so the kids learn." Zhelesnik teaches classes Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., and volunteers extra time after school to teach sewing. "I have a sewing class, about six girls, and they love to sew." WATCH: Zhelesnik is not alone. Dale Swall has been teacher for more than half a century and, as he reports to think that the current definition of success is a potentially toxic prescription for your life and work. It is a description that makes you feel more like a failure than a success if it's the standard against which all meaning in your life is measured. Let me quote a few more passages from this book that describe these enduringly successful people so that you can discover who these people are rather than what they do. These people "insist that success may never come without a compelling personal commitment to something you care about and would be willing to do, with or without counting on wealth, fame, power, or public acceptance as an outcome." Additionally, "[w]hat you do must matter deeply to you ... It's something that you're so passionate about that you lose all track of time when you do it. ... In fact, you could not be paid to not do it." Another essential element is "a highly developed sense of accountability, audacity, passion, and responsible optimism. ... Steve Jobs told us in an interview back before his famous ad campaign: Enduringly successful people 'think different.'" (Emphasis added.) Successful People Welcome Failure One of the most important qualities of these enduringly successful people is that they "drone on endlessly about learning from their mistakes. ... Every experience teaches something. They don't use a weakness or a setback to distrust themselves. ... The question is not whether or not they won this round, but what do they do with the feedback. ... [They] find it irresistible to try, fail, improve; they try again, fail again, and get even better." (Emphasis added.) Although these people probably worked more hours a day than most people are willing to, they were not successful because they worked harder than others or even because they knew better than others what to do. They operated out of their passion and commitment to make a difference. They didn't care what others thought. They courted failure as a way to learn what to do better the next time. What these people have in common is an absence of the negative beliefs that would cause them to fear failure and need acceptance, personal qualities that stop most people. As the authors point out, "They just tolerate the risks, feel the fear, take the brick-bats, learn from failure, and do what matters to them anyway." Implement What Emerges You might still be asking, "What is their standard for deciding what to do?" With their vision and commitment as a context, their actions are driven by their answer to the question: What behavior is appropriate to further my passion? They do whatever is appropriate at the moment; that is, their behavior is a function of their vision and commitment, not something copied from others or from a list of "best practices." They take advantage of what emerges, moment by moment. You see, when you live your passion, you are always looking for how to manifest it in the world. As opportunities emerge, act on them. Some opportunities will prove fruitful; build on them. Some won't; learn from them