Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.

Failing better than you succeed

There's something quietly radical about this definition. Most of us have absorbed the opposite story: success means avoiding failure, building a spotless track record, proving yourself right the first time. We treat failures like black marks that accumulate against us. But Churchill's version flips the script entirely. He's saying the failures are inevitable—actually, they're the whole point—and the only real skill is how you move through them.

Think about any skill you've actually acquired: learning to cook, getting better at your job, building a relationship that works. You didn't stumble into competence by staying safe. You burned things, said awkward things, made wrong calls. The people who end up genuinely good at these things aren't the ones who happened to be naturals. They're the ones who kept trying after it went wrong, stayed curious instead of defeated, showed up again the next day.

The underrated part? That "without losing enthusiasm" bit. It's not stoicism or gritting your teeth. It's about preserving the actual desire to keep going, to learn something, to try again differently. That's harder than just being stubborn. It means protecting your curiosity and your sense of possibility, even when the evidence keeps mounting that you're not as naturally gifted as you hoped. Somehow, that matters more than the failures themselves.