Steps Towards Success
Abhay Shrivastava
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Abstract— Success in general means achieving an aim or attaining one’s goal. To some people success is living a comfortable and respectful life, some believe that success is a journey of hard work through endless efforts to achieve the desired goal, while others think having hefty amount of money is a real success. But for me “success is living your dreams and fulfilling your desire.” In the process of getting success one either achieves it or fails in his efforts. It is said by a great poet that “the real taste of success can only be understood by a man who have tasted the defeat”.
Sometimes success also depends on the fate but that’s not true in every case. Even if the fate is not favoring us we can lead towards success by putting extra efforts and doing hard work. But fate without efforts leads us nowhere. One needs to put himself/herself into his/her goal whole heartedly. Success is also affected by the priorities of life, someone wants to grow professionally while the other satisfies themselves by holding the responsibility of family i.e. their personal life or some people wants to get the higher rank in society. For all such people success mean differently.
Index Terms— Success, Hard work, Efforts, Goal, Aim
I. Introduction
This paper is about what makes a difference in the quality of life of people, what makes a difference in their performance, so that they get the result they want. Everybody wants to be successful but to be successful one first has to understand what success means.
Success in general means achieving an aim or attaining one’s goal. To some people success is living a comfortable and respectful life, some believe that success is a journey of hard work through endless efforts to achieve the desired goal, while others think having hefty amount of money is a real success
According to the great motivator Tony Robbins “success is being able to do whatever you want, with whom ever you want, where ever you want as much as you want”.
According to Jack Canfield “success is fulfilling your soul’s purpose”
Every scholar has given a different definition about success but according to me “success is living your dreams with both open and closed eyes and knowing the art of fulfilment.”
In the process of getting success one has to face many hindrances, many setbacks & a lot of pain. But if a person faces them with courage, he/she can be successful. But most people don’t do that after trying once or twice they say to themselves that it can’t be done, it is not possible.
We all know that Mr. Edison invented the bulb after more than 10,000 attempts. What if he had stopped trying after 10-20 attempts. We would not have bulbs. Nothing is impossible to a willing heart. Nothing is impossible if you are ready to take the chance. If you don’t know how to do the task what you are trying to do then take the guidance from the person who has already done that. Technical education can be achieved easily but attitude of “not quitting” has to be developed.
A study shows that most of the people quit their task when they are about to succeed, they quit when they are at the doors of success. In ‘ YOU CAN WIN’ Mr Shiv Khera writes that every success story is a story of great failure, he shares the life history of a man who failed in business at the age of 21, was defeated in a legislative race at the age of 22, failed again in business at the age of 24, his sweetheart died when he was of age 26, had a nervous breakdown at age 27, lost a congressional race at age 34, lost a senatorial race at age 45, failed in an effort to become vice-president at the age of 47, lost senatorial race at the age of 49, and was elected as the president of United States at the age of 52. This man was Abraham Lincoln.[1] So it is important to make continuous efforts in making your dream come true.
II. SOME HINDRANCES IN SUCCESS
Fear of failure/success.
Lack of self-confidence.
No plan.
Procrastinating.
Family responsibility.
Financial security issue.
Insincerity about goal.
Stress.
Underestimation.
Comparison with others.
Worthiness.
Negative Attitude
Doing too much alone.
Lack of priority.
Lack of training.
Lack of resources.
Most of the hindrances described above are not real, they are imaginary. They can be resolved by keeping certain points in mind. We all know what is holding us back. Usually most people wait for ideal conditions & never get that. And successful people make the condition favourable for them.
III. Following steps will help you in reaching on acme of your life
You:
Everything starts from and with you. If you are ready, you can do anything. If you take the responsibility of your life, state and condition, if you stop blaming and complaining, then you will start believing in yourself, you will begin to discover your strength & capability.
What happens when we blame others for our mistakes, we neglect our weaknesses rather than focusing and overcoming them. If we complain about something we are being pessimistic, we focus on the lack of resources, we focus on what went wrong rather focusing on what can be done now.
So we should stop blaming and complaining and should start accepting and taking the responsibility of our life. Nightingale said that “all of us are self-made but only the successful will accept it” so start believing in yourself.
Goal Setting:
Goal setting is the most important factor in getting success. It’s like knowing the destination where you want to reach. Most people are running without any goal, without knowing where they want to go. So set a goal first. It is important to set a goal in order to make an action plan. While setting a goal we should remember one thing, we should not just set a goal, we should set a goal with time limit. Because if we time bound ourselves, our brain starts working faster. It wants to produce the result before the deadline. For example if you want to lose weight rather saying “I want to lose weight” say “I want to lose 5 pound before 10 May 2014”.
Vague goals lead to vague results. Try to be more specific with time, when we have particular time duration to perform a task our brain functions more efficiently, with more concentrations. We all know the functionality of GPS system when we put the exact destination it shows us the way. What if we just put the name of the lane or city where we want to go, it will take us to the starting of that lane or city not at our destination. So we have to be more specific about our goals. “What and By When”. Because the things that we schedule are the things that we get done.
Dream Big & Visualize:
Gen. Wesley Clark (Former Head of NATO) said “It doesn’t take any more effort to dream a big dream than it does to dream a small dream”. You have the ability to do things that you can’t even imagine. Most people don’t realise that majority of people fail not because they aim too high and miss, but because they aim too low and hit and many don’t aim at all. It is important to dream big because if we dream big we visualize big, if we visualize big we put more efforts to make it real. It increases our efficiency, our dedication and concentration increases to turn the dream into reality. Dream big, don’t think how you are going to do it, that’s going to come in due time. You are going to develop a plan of action; you will become the person who will attract the people and resources according to your need.
Here is an example of turning a dream into reality. Everyone knows ‘Chicken soup for the soul’ fame Jack Canfield and Mark. One day they decided to sell 1 million copies of their book. They didn’t know how they were going to do that, they just visualized it every day and night, one day after a seminar Jack took a bus to his home, the lady sitting next to him recognize him and asked “you are chicken soup guy? What you and Mark are next up to?” he replied “we are trying to sell 1 million copies in one day” she replied “I can help you in doing that” he asked how? She said “we are buyer for the WB bookstore all over the world” and rest is history. They sold 1 million copies in one day. Our visualization has power. Our mind can’t rationalize between reality and visualization. An experiment was done on a bunch of people; they were asked to close their eyes and imagine themselves standing on the roof of the world tallest building without any railing. Some of them started shivering and some stepped back, their brain didn’t rationalize between reality and visualization.
If we visualize our dream daily we force it to become reality. A study from Duke University Para Psychology center shows that our thoughts have ultimate power. Whatever we visualize we send this energy upto 250,000 miles. It’s like sending email up to 250,000 miles & asking for response, and the important thing is someone always responds sooner or later. Like in the case of Jack and Mark, they just visualized their goal and got the reply few weeks later.
Dr Masaru Emoto a Japanese author and entrepreneur described the power of thought in his book “The hidden message in water”. He said water has the capability to store energy. He did an experiment on water. He took a sample of water and told some people to send negative energy (like useless, dirty, poisonous etc.) to the water and then took another sample and ask some people to send positive energy(like beautiful, calm, necessary, tasty etc.) then froze both the samples at 20 degree below 0. Once it was frozen they put both under the microscope. As the water started melting, it formed crystal and it was seen that different kind of energy formed different kind of crystals. The water which received positive energy made beautiful crystal and the water which received negative energy formed distorted crystal. They did this experiment on LAKE BIWA (The largest freshwater lake in Japan), and on Saint Crolx River that divides the state Wisconsin and Minnesota, on Mississippi river. Why it is important because 85% of our body is made up of water by generating positive energy, by constantly thinking positive we create positive energy inside us and vice versa.[2]
Figure 1. Photo of negative energy water and positive energy water.
Stay Optimistic:
Being optimistic, having a positive attitude contributes a lot in one’s success. Shiv Khera says “positive thinking does not guaranteed success; positive thinking increases the probability of success” [1]. Having a positive attitude makes a pleasing personality, it energizes you, it increases your enjoyment of life, inspires other people around you, help people in becoming a contributing member of society & an asset to their country. For an organization to stay optimistic is very necessary as it helps in reducing stress, increases profit, breeds loyalty, makes for a congenial atmosphere, increases productivity, fosters teamwork, solves problems, improves quality and creates a healthy environment in organization.
Whenever we are positive we see good things happening around us, we become productive and if we are negative we see bad things and become destructive. You have to take the garbage out otherwise it will start stinking. As we all know Mr Thomas Edison at the age of 67 lost his factory to fire. After watching all his lifetime effort going up in smoke he said “all our mistakes are burnt up. Thank god we can start anew”. In spite of this whole tragedy he invented the phonograph. What an attitude, what if we all take this attitude and keep looking for sunny side in every situation. It doesn’t mean to overlook the mistakes. It means to learn from the mistakes and move ahead. Don’t get stuck in your past experiences of failure, focus on the future plan. Whenever you feel negative go to a smiling baby. It is found that whenever a baby smiles it omits positive energy. Their aura is positive.
One day a kid was playing a game ‘connect 4’ with his father. Father won 10 round consecutively then he stands up and says “Son, I am bored. I don’t want to play anymore. I am going to bed”. Son replied “no, it’s not over until I win.” They played several other rounds. After 11 rounds kid won and then he stood up and said “I am ready to go to sleep now”. This should be the attitude of every person who is chasing his dreams. After facing any failure everyone should say “it’s not over until I win”.
Environment:
Environment plays a major role in one’s success. It is seen that majority of the people who are successful spend most of their hours working with the people of their interest. It has been seen that if you spend most of the time with optimistic people your attitude also becomes optimistic and vice versa. You have to choose your environment according to your need. You have to throw negative people out of your life who are draining your energy, who keep telling that you can’t do it, who weaken you. You have to change your environment from negative to positive by being around people who nourish you, who give you energy, appreciate your efforts, encourage you and inspire you. There is a saying that “birds of a feather flock together”. If you run around with looser you will end up a looser.
If you want to become a singer spend your time with singers better than you, if you want to be a dancer spend your time with dancers better than you, if you earn Rs 10,000 a month and want to earn Rs 20,000 start spending your time with the people who are earning RS 20,000. By constantly spending your time with the people of your kind of interest you learn the skill to get the desired result.
Take Action:
Will to win is worthless until you have the will to prepare. Just by dreaming big, visualizing and spending your time with the right is not fruitful until you take action in order to achieve your goal. It is said that “Standing on earth thinking of sky, how would you ever get to fly”. You can’t achieve your aim just by visualizing it the whole day; you also have to make a constant effort in order to improvise yourself to get the mastery on the particular subject. It is like sitting in a car and thinking to reach the destination without starting the car. First you have to put the key in then start driving after some time you will reach the destination. So take the step towards your dream.
To get the result that only 5% of the population has, you have to have the guts to do what only 5% of the population is willing to do. Jim Rohn says “you can’t hire other people to do your pushups for you”. To make yourself fit you can’t hire other people to do exercise on your behalf similarly to become successful you can’t rely on anyone else; you have to take action on your own because nobody cares about your dream more than you do. So take action in order to make your dream come true.
IV. Conclusion
Every single person can achieve his/her aim, everyone can make their dream come true just by deciding “WHAT, HOW and WHEN”. What do you want? How you are going to get it? And by when you want it? You can achieve you goal.
Getting success is like knowing the combination to a lock, if you know the lock it doesn’t matter who you are boy or girl, black or white the lock has to open. By following the steps discussed above everyone can make their dream come true.
. We spend years in school learning about the lives of other successful people, but we devote hardly any time at all to studying ourselves. I believe that all of us are unique, have different potential and different qualities but all want to attain their aim. I once heard that everyone is born unique but most of us die copies. The major factor of failure is, not believing in ourselves and doubting our potential. I believe that we all have the capability to produce gold. The paper guides us in finding and nurturing our goodness to unlock the keys to achievement. It motivates us to do what we must do to get on and go on with our lives. Keeping in mind, Shiv Khera’s view that the best idea will not work until we work upon that idea. . My Paper offers practical tips and strategies for pulling yourself out of discouraging situations. Life does not always present us with an ideal situation in which we pursue our dreams. Paper explains how to dream, how to set goals, and how to equip yourself with succeed.
References
Shiv khera, “You can win”(references)
Dr Masaru Emoto, “The hidden message in water”(reference)
Les Brown, “Live your dreams”. (references)
Dr. David Schwartz “The Magic of Thinking Big”. (references)
