You can't measure success in a year or two. Speculating on a day-to-day or week-to-week basis is fraught with uncertainty and dangers, but someone who takes a long-term view invariably does well.

Take the long view of your life, career or business, and much worry and angst is removed from the equation. You may be no better than someone else at what you do at the outset, but if you let time and experience play its part, and have a willingness to build these into the 'product' that you offer the world (whether this is a thing, a service, or you yourself), you will set yourself apart from your peers.

Fashions come and go, but quality and originality are always recognized. Don't despair if you feel like a lone voice in the wilderness, or if people see what you do as being out of setp with the times. Consider this radical idea: you do not have to depend on 'the times' for your success. Rather, by sticking to your guns, by being faithful to who you are and what you do, the times can be shaped by you.

The passing of time has a way of revealing truth. It lifts up to recognition those who stick to their guns, even when they face lack of recognition or opposition. It also puts in their proper place people who once seemed invincible and ubiquitous, and whose true merits can not be properly judged. It is never enough to be excellent or even extraordinary in terms of talents, technical skills or ability to motivate and command people. For a person to reach his or her potential, there must be a certain amount of self-reflection and willingness to correct character flaws or rackets. Self-reflection may not be compatible with the go-getting nature of fast success, but it is compatible with real, slow-cooked success.

Whether or not you accept the theories surrounding mid-life, it is difficult to argue that having spent four decades on the planet has no effect in terms of the ripening of personal character and skills, or the execution of successful ideas. By forty, we usually know what we are good at, but we may be more open to changing our ways if it leads to greater success. By this age we know the value of persistence, but are wise enough to keep experimenting in order to find 'what works'. Finally whatever pressures we felt when younger to conform to expectations or peers, teachers or parents, we are not our own person.