Success story
Here is a little nugget of a story which I read in the frequently cited 'Seven Habits of…’ It goes like this.
A famous pianist was playing on stage and had the entire audience mesmerized by him finesse and skill. Once the recital got over, one of the spellbound fans went backstage to the famous Pianist and remarked, “I would give my life to play like that". The pianist unmoved by the rather lofty praise simply said "I just did".
Success demands its true price and that was the idea behind this little paragraph. Success is never easy or cheap! In one of his interviews, the intense actor that Ajay Devgan is, said;
"What I have learnt here is that there are no big dramas or events in life as far as success is concerned. Little, little things contribute to make you a success and every little thing is so important ".
Great insights to help you make a successful career!
Managing of success:
Since every human being is unique, the meaning of success or interpretation of success for every individual would be different and unique. From my point of view, a true and everlasting success would have the following features.
S - Satisfying (success by ethical means)
U - Uplifting (progressive for self and the community)
C - Creative (something new, innovative or different)
C - Constructive (useful for the humanity)
E - Enjoyable
S - Shared (with others)
S - Sustainable (over a long period of time)
Now, these words that I have used to describe the elements of success are also open to personal interpretations and conclusions but the point is that success includes the people and environment that we live in and unless our success contributes to the growth, happiness and success of people around us, it will be a very limited success, indeed!
Today, success is being defined in very narrow terms. Success basically includes a big bank balance, palatial houses, fleet of cars, designer clothes and jewellery, and if possible; fame and glamour. The philosophy being put forward is "Live it up for you only live once”. People are obsessed with "making it" and prepared to pay "Whatever it takes". Relations are being used as "Stepping stones" and friends have become "milch cows". Competition is the "name of the game" and the winner is someone ruthless enough to "climb on other people's head".
In this crazy "rat race" selfishness has been stretched beyond "the human
elastic limit”
What have been the consequences of this kind of "living for the moment" life style? How many people are truly content and happy today? What has happened to the families and relationships? What kind of childhood do kids experience these days? How many of us can confidently predict that in their old age they will be looked after by their kids? What has become of the general health of the population? In terms of wealth creation people have certainly progressed and that has certainly made life very convenient and I do not contend that it is possible to become happy without money. What I wish to bring to your attention is that success has many sides, facets and like a well cut diamond, it will sparkle only when a sense of balance and proportion exists. Success, the bottom-line is, should be balanced.
Success literature:
There is an entire industry churning out books and other materials for the consumption of this success starved world. There are people like me who have made a lifelong career out of advising and counseling people. There are a plethora of success oriented courses and programs run from all kinds of places. To lead the success brigade, there is a team of researchers who often quote the results of some scientific experiments to make their theories and ideas more convincing to the masses. I am nobody to comment on their effectiveness or authenticity nor am I going to demean myself by disparaging them. For your own information and self analysis, I am going to list some of my personal observations and opinions regarding the success literature.
The really good books, which have also become very popular, desist from devising any formulas for success. They are value-based and talk about ideas and principles. The best ones conclude that success always depends on the personality, attitude and values of an individual.
There are numerous writers and books that exploit the natural human weaknesses such as laziness. These books prescribe a short-cut or a clever-trick to garner quick success. Fortunately, people see through these "tricky" materials but God knows how many people may have wasted their time, efforts and money in trying to implement the convoluted ideas contained in these books.
Ways to succeed, just like human civilization, have its own patterns of evolution. Ideas that worked a decade back become useless when circumstances change. Nobody can guarantee an absolute formula to success.
Human beings, to a great extent, even now are at the mercy of their circumstances and nobody can deny the powerful influence of political, social and economic environment of our immediate surroundings.
Acceptance of the reality, making an effort to improve things and controlling our mind to become happy, these are some of the common themes in popular success books.
One very effective idea, which I would call as "Choice Theory" is based on the premise, that life always gives us a choice, even in the worst of situations. We at least have a choice to say "no" to become unhappy. The presumption behind the "choice theory" is that we can control our mind and put it in a chosen state like a car gear.
Another interesting theory is what I would choose to call 'motivation theory'. The focus here is to find out what motivates people to act and what doesn't. There is a lot of discussion on internal and external motivators. It’s like trying to find out what makes people to act, to do, to perform. Often, the buck is passed on to the individual himself, that true motivation comes from within and it’s a decision, just like the decision to breathe or the decision to oversleep.
Even if the effectiveness of these books is questionable in its universal applicability there are some marvelous books that can provide penetrating insights and help in leading a meaningful life? All good books have one common thread running through them. It is that they are realistic in their approach and teach the readers to base their lives on time-tested values such as kindness, industry, thrift, compassion, dignity, honesty and sincerity.
In the name of going to the 'core' and uncovering 'true' meaning, a lot of senseless hair splitting is done which can be quite confusing and adversely affect the impressionable mind of an adolescent, growing up kid.
I would like to sum up this section on the efficacy of success literature flooding the newsstands these days with this advice of mine to exercise caution and discretion in choosing what you buy to read. And remember the old saying, “Never judge a book by its cover".
Looks can be deceptive.
Success & career planning:
Cultivating success is a lot similar to cultivating a fruit tree. The tree has to be watered regularly, tilled when required and only after it has matured that it will bear fruits. One has to be patient and persistent to be able to enjoy the fruits of success.
Consider the following similarities between nurturing a plant and planning for success
There is a set time for everything. If you miss it this time, then you have to wait for the full cycle to get completed.
Negligence, even for a short time, can prove very damaging.
There are many obstacles & problems on the way but we have to attend to our duties.
Everyone is keen to enjoy the fruits but not everyone is willing to put in labor.
Jealous people will try to distract you. They may even try to harm the plant you are trying to grow so as to discourage you!
Ask for advice, you'll get plenty. Ask for contribution, you’ll get none!
If you don’t share the fruits with others, they start grudging it and resent your success.
All this was needed to put things in the right perspective and to correct your orientation towards success, hard work and people. Please remember that not everyone will be happy to see you succeed!
Now let us talk about success and its relationship with career planning. I once read somewhere "If you do not know where you are going, you'll reach nowhere." Success has to first begin with an accurate plan, like a train journey. Then, if any changes occur on the way, the changes necessary are incorporated into the plan. But all this you must know already. So let me tell you something you may not have known before. Implementing a career plan is like climbing a very steep mountain. You first get one toehold that is firm and only then can you lift the other leg to climb up. You can never hope to climb very fast without compromising on your safety. So success is a game won by slow and steady. Gamblers look glamorous only on TV screen. Success is in totality, cumulative (adding up) where all your efforts get accumulated until you reach that "critical mass" and then you suddenly cross that "threshold limit".
Here, the observant reader might note the analogy with a nuclear reactor and the space rocket launches.
The conclusions to the previous paragraph are these:
· Success is never easy or cheap. If it is, it’s not worth it.
· Success is never a dramatic event and happens slowly over a period of time.
· Performing on the big stage is not the only thing. Every minor, seemingly insignificant details go into making the performance successful.
Price of success:
Motto: "Minimum pain, maximum gain"
"No pain, no gain".
Inputs for success:
i. Intelligent hard work: Just working hard is not enough. We have to know what has to be done so that we do not waste time or energy in doing things that are not to be done. We also need to know the easiest, cheapest and fastest way of doing things. Whatever resources we have, they are always in a limited supply. Especially, the time factor and we have to learn to sustain our ventures on these limited available resources.
ii. Sacrifice: You may love watching TV but you have only so much time in which you can either work or watch TV. Naturally you'll have to sacrifice your little pleasures if you wish to succeed in life. It is referred to as the Opportunity Cost. But there are different kinds of people who get so obsessed with the idea of success that they even shirk their basic responsibilities. Now that is no sacrifice and it isn't success either. Sacrifices you'll have to make but keep them reasonable. There are some others who sacrifice their health, family and peace of mind at the altar of success. That is unfair to you and the people to whom you matter. Absolutely unjustified!
iii. Time: There is a biological clock in our body that tells us when it is the time to eat, relax, sleep or wake up. We need to listen to it if we wish to sustain our success. Prolonged alterations to the rhythm of this clock have serious, sometimes even fatal, consequences. All these cases of high blood pressure, heart attacks, depression are fallout of a biological clock gone awry.
Then there is another angle to the time input. There may be things that we may have to do every day and they do not seem so important so we try to postpone them. Exercising, reading, spending time with family are some of the things we keep postponing. In the long run, this ignorance will cost us very dearly. Given below is a time-management prioritization grid (borrowed from “Seven Habits of Highly effective People) to help you plan and utilize your time more efficiently and effectively. Activities will fall into one of the quadrants on the basis of their importance & urgency.
Quadrant I (urgent, important) - Emergency; crisis; must do now.
Quadrant II (not urgent, important) - Long term results; not to be ignored; regularity needed.
Quadrant III (urgent, not important) - Time wasters; do not spend a lot of time here
Quadrant IV (not urgent, not important) - Escapist's paradise; self defeating; never do it.
Intensive research: In every field, the specialization process has increased standards to a very high degree. The competition necessitates improvement and that is why every year the benchmark for excellence keeps rising upward. This entire thing means that entry into every field also keeps getting more difficult in terms of qualifications, competence, knowledge and skills needed. In such a scenario, there is no substitute for doing a much focussed of research about the field that we wish to enter and what would be the requirement. It’s more like first finding out where you wish to go and then locating the ways and means to reach there. Knowledge is power and it is not easily available, remember?
Analysis: Collecting all the information may not be enough if we do not know what to do with it. It is this capacity to do intelligent analysis which separates the outstanding from ordinary. Let me tell you about the power of analysis. There is a person called Warren Buffet who happens to be one of the richest persons on the earth. He has a company where small investor put in their money. Warren Buffet invests this money into various avenues and options available, makes a profit and gives dividend to his investors from this profit. He has such a reputation that people trust their hard-earned money with him without much thought and Buffet has earned that reputation by consistently picking up shares of the companies in the stock-market that have turned out to be winners. Now, how does he do it? Through research and analysis, of course! To give you an example of the accuracy of his analysis, in the nineties of the previous decade, all the stocks of the tech companies were booming. There was a universal enthusiasm to invest in a computer company, especially internet ones, with everyone expecting to make a huge killing. The shares of these companies touched unheard of heights but Warren Buffet remained away from all this excitement. He kept his choice simple and orthodox. Many people thought that may be Warren Buffet had lost his business sense after all. Today, so many of these glorified companies have gone bust and it is Warren Buffet who is still smiling with his old economy shares. Warren Buffet explains his basis for analysis thus, "If I don't understand it, I don't do it."
We need to develop our own powers of independent thinking and judgment because we all are unique and different. We will need to make our own decisions that are sound, in order to have faith in ourselves. And success goes only to those who believe that they can do it and then systematically work for it.
Common errors in the path of success: In our quest for success and glory, most of us give it a try which is based upon a pre-conceived plan and strategy. I do not think anyone said it better than the famous rock artist, John Lennon;
"It is better to aim at perfection and miss it rather than aim at imperfection and hit it.”
Unfortunately, there are far too many missed aims and failed shooters. So what are the likely causes of people not doing too well in their lives?
I. Doing it all alone: Many of us, because of ego hassles, refuse to ask for help from others. Some also have a 'Superman mentality’ of being the "one man army". And then there are still some more that are too shy and timid to seek others’ assistance. Whatever be the reason, no man can hope to succeed all by himself. Nobody is self-sufficient and we need God and others to help. Fingers, when spread, can be easily twisted or broken but when combined together to make a fist, it acquires strength and power. This world and society that we live in, is interdependent. Just like we need others, others will need us, too and life is all about being of value to each other. If you do not agree with this, you may go to a jungle and live alone and find for yourself whether you can really survive there all by yourself.
This society, with the foundation of family and tribe, was created because it was needed in the first place. Yes, but you have the choice to pick up whom you seek help from but don't be very rigid about it. A resource is a resource and better leave it at that!
Inconsistency: What would happen if our heart did not beat regularly? The earth did not rotate on its axis regularly? Or we did not get food regularly? You know the consequences, don't you? Many people think that they can work irregularly and still succeed. This inconsistency in our efforts is often due to laziness, ignorance or lack of drive to succeed. Can we blame anybody if we fail? Success has many partners, failure none! If you can recall the Time management prioritization grid, the second quadrant includes activities which may not seem urgent but are important and have to be done on a consistent basis. Studying, working, taking rest, eating nutritious food, exercising, developing healthy relations and contacts are some of the second quadrant activities, so vital for success.
Giving in to peer & parental pressure:
Our friends and family members do exert an undeniable influence on our lives and it is certainly not positive all the time. Let us analyze separately how friends and parents or other family members can bring about negative influences on our lives.
a. Peer pressure: A majority of people get introduced to drugs, alcohol, tobacco etc because a dear friend insisted. Stay away from such destructive characters. Friends also are a major source of time wasting activities. If your friends can not contribute to your welfare and progress, you don't need them.
b. Parental pressure: I am not attributing any ill will or malice to any parent of this world but sometime, parents hurt the prospects of their own child, despite having their child's best interest in their hearts. How is that, let’s see.
- Parents at times try to pressurize children into pursuing a career against the wishes of the child. Parents often resort to emotional blackmail to get the child to toe their line. Now why do parents do it? Because they believe that they know the best! Sometimes parents try to fulfill their own dreams and fantasies through their own child. They become so obsessed to get the child into a pre-determined career that often the child is treated like a machine. Parents also draw, what Stephen Covey calls 'Social mileage' from activeness of their child and show off the child as a 'trophy'. Somewhere in this entire process, the uniqueness, individuality and creativity of the child are destroyed. I am not taking sides here. I was once a child myself and today I am a parent too. What I wish to highlight here is the excess baggage that children carry these days of the parental expectations and resultant emotional pressure. A child is often demeaned for not living up to parents’ expectations and is made to feel guilty for disappointing such 'considerate and caring' parents. Its assuming psychological dimensions here and we will deal with the matter later in one of the chapters on 'Personality Theory'. There have been instances of promising kids hurting themselves or committing suicide to get even with overbearing parents. Kids need love, attention and discipline in equally balanced dosages.
Quality spectrum:
I hope you remember 'Job description' & 'Job specification'! Job specification spells out the requirements to qualify for a job and more complex the job description, more elaborated and more stringent are the job specifications. Given below is a chart which lists out the various types of qualities that are looked for in an applicant. The chart also shows the varying degrees of that particular quality from best to the worst. The quality spectrum is designed to help you understand the selection criteria for various types of careers and jobs. The quality spectrum may not be an exhaustive design but it’s substantial. It is next to impossible for one individual to possess all the qualities to a very high degree but it does point towards the path to perfection.
Let us clarify a point here. One person, because of the inherent imperfection in general human make-up, will not be suitable for all jobs, all careers or even all companies of a single career. So it is imperative that we analyze ourselves and assess our strengths and weaknesses. Based on this we can look for our opportunities and take guard against threats. It wouldn’t be very sensible to chase all the wild geese in the forest. We can only catch one bird at a time and a rolling stone gathers no moss. So learn to develop focus, patience and concentration. Choose a path carefully and then keep walking.
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Your orientation for success wouldn't be complete without knowing some of the ideas given below. Some of these ideas have humorously scientific undertones but the fundamentals are bang on target.
Peter's Principle: 'Every man rises to his own level of incompetence.'
Inference : Keep learning if you wish to keep rising.
Murphy's Law:
If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong!
Inference: Leave nothing to chance. Inculcate an eye for detail and the patience to execute fully.
Work expands to fill the volume of time allotted to it.
Inference: Work smart. Prioritize your time. Don't just pretend to work hard.
“Never mistake thoughts for motion, motion for action and action for achievement!”
Pareto's 80:20 Principle:
80 percent of results are due to 20 percent of the factors.
Inference: Focus on the significant twenty percent tasks for maximum output. Pareto's 80:20 Principle is easily verifiable in the world's wealth distribution where 20% people produce 80% of the wealth and a shop where 80% of the sale comes from 20% customers.
In the beginning of this section, we talked of the definition of success. One of the features of the success was' sustainability'. A one-off success would be always thought of as a lucky 'fluke'. Therefore, success is always a journey, never a destination. We keep trying and keep achieving. Here are some of the causes that may cut your success saga short. We need to know them now because later, it may be too late.
Common pitfalls after success:
Big headedness: You might have heard this remark before "success has gone to his head". The mythical character "Ravan" is the ultimate symbol of big- headedness. And what happens to the reckless arrogance?
Here is a story. “There lived in a village a mathematician with his family. The village was close to a river. Once it rained heavily for three days continuously and the river otherwise a narrow, shallow stream, started to swell alarmingly. Everyone in the village began to cross the river on foot as there were no boats available. Mathematician was confidently waiting. He would explain his confidence with this logic. The river at its deepest was five feet and at the banks only one foot. So the average depth of the river, at 3 feet, was no cause for alarm. He'll cross it when the right time came. The river rose to 9 feet in the middle now so the average depth came to five feet six inches. He concluded that he shouldn’t wait any longer. He entered the river with a lot of confidence but had to retreat back quickly, the confidence now replaced by morose hopelessness. Confidence is good, overconfidence in not good at all!
GRASS GROWING UNDER THE FEET: This is about laziness, indifference and misplaced optimism. This has been beautifully explained in the classy bestseller “Who moved my cheese".
“There were two rats who, after lot of toil and struggle, managed to discover a store room full of cheese. The way to reach the storehouse was complex but the two mastered it. Every day they would make their way to the store and find a block of the most delicious cheese. It went on for so long that finding cheese became a routine affair. But then one day, when they reached the store, there was no cheese. They were stunned. They waited but no more cheese. They returned the next day again to find no cheese. They had become so used to getting their daily cheese; they found it very discouraging in having to find another source of food all over again. They kept wondering who could have moved their cheese. Then of course, one of them moves on in life and goes off to find another store. But the other one becomes terribly sad, dejected and bitter. He is still angry about somebody moving 'his' cheese.”
Complacency after accomplishing one big achievement will ensure that it was your last one
DIVING LEARNING CURVE:
AB- Growth stage, People learn the most and the fastest when they begin learning
BC- Plateau, people believe they have learnt enough. Do not learn anything new or substantial.
CD- Declines stage, because they do not try to learn any more they start losing whatever knowledge and competence they had previously acquired.
This is a diagrammatic representation of the learning process of an average person. So, if we do nothing. We will start losing our sharpness and slowly will become utterly incompetent! what would happen now, according to peter's principle? They say the easiest way to become an old dog in to stop learning new tricks.
The intervention is a conscious decision to start learning something new the moment you have learnt the old one. This keeps the excitement in learning going.
The usual suspects:
Every time when a crime in a locality takes place and the perpetrator is not known, the police will round up the usual suspects. The usual suspects are the people with a history of involvement with similar crimes before and they are obvious likely culprits. The history is full of stories about spectacular rise succeeded by equally spectacular fall and the usual reason would often be the presence of 'lackeys' or ‘cronies’. Often, success attracts the kind of people who just want to feed off that success, without really doing much. But they do something! They flatter shamelessly, praise outrageously and in doing so, corrupt the mind of their (host) prey incorrigibly. The flattery gets into the head and that is the beginning of the decline. It may happen to even the most sensible of persons so beware of the people whose only occupation is to flatter you.
We all have read the story of the fox and the crow with a piece of bread.
“The crow was sitting on a high bough with the bread firmly held in its beak. The fox saw the bread and became greedy. It knew that crow wouldn't share the bread so it thought of a plan. It called out, "you have a great voice". The crow looked surprised. The fox went on "oh, I love your songs. You really sing very well." The crow now looked pleased. The flattery went on and finally fox requested for a song. The crow proceeded to oblige such a persistent admirer. It opened its mouth and the bread fell down. The fox grabbed the bread and scampered away. The crow was beginning to understand the plot but that was too late.”
Corruption: Lord Acton diagnosed it brilliantly when he so famously said 'power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely'. Some of the country's best minds, the civil service qualifiers, turn out to be the most greedy, notorious and useless persons in this country. There may be many causes of their corruption and it is fashionably called a 'systemic failure' but then the same system also produces gems like Kiran Bedi. People may give many reasons for their corruption and try to justify it by saying everybody does it! But that is merely eyewash. Corruption has many excuses, honesty none.
Criminals: We live in very difficult times and it will only get worse from hereafter. Extortion, kidnapping for ransom; these are some very real and deadly threats facing the successful people in our society.
Jealousy the green-eyed monster:
Unsuccessful or not so successful people become jealous of those who are successful?! It’s sad but true. There is an instance in the Holy Bible which vividly brings out the ugliness of jealousy in human nature.
“Joseph, who was the most beloved son of his father, became the object of hatred for other brothers. They wanted to get rid of him and one day, when all brothers were out in the field, the remaining brothers conspired to kill him. Joseph was cunningly pushed into a deep pit but then one of the brothers shows a little mercy. Instead of letting Joseph die in the wilderness, they sell him off to the passing merchants. But get rid of Joseph, they did!”
Our own mythological epic, Mahabharata, is the brutal tale of jealousy, intense rivalry and the destruction.
Since we cannot stop others from being jealous, what can we do on our part to minimize the occurrences of jealous strikes against us?
· Don't show off and don't brag.
· Try to share with others the fruits of your success.
· Donate generously to the needy and for worthy causes.
· Be on active member of the community you live in. Intermingle with others.
· Help others to succeed if you can.
· Be careful and cautions at all times. Never trust people blindly.
This chapter on success will not be complete without making you aware of the smallness of human beings in this universe. Astronomers tell us that there are stars that are a million times bigger than our own sun. They tell us that there are trillions of such stars and some of them as far away as it would take light to travel millions of years. Light travels at a speed of 1, 86,000 miles/second! What size; what distance and what dimensions! This universe is so huge; we cannot even imagine how big it is. Where do we stand in this scheme of things? We are as significant as a tiny speck of dust.
If we can remember this, we will stay humble and go about our business without much pomp or show. Time and again, the earthquakes, the hurricanes, are reminders of our smallness, especially in times of smugness and arrogance. There are people who could not survive cancer, despite having all the money in the bank. There have been numerous trailblazing success stories and equally numerous disastrous failures. We would do well to keep in mind the ephemeral nature of success in life and not get too obsessed with it. Otherwise, the success starts driving us, controlling our lives. We have to decide which is better; a life dependent on success or success as a normal way of life? Success is important but not that important. Things that really count in the end are good health, relations and peace of mind. I may sound like sermonizing but many of us who are running in the rat race forget what they are actually running for. And the irony of all that frantic running is that even if you win the race, you still remain a rat!
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