Success Ingredients

Google says success means accomplishment of aim, and I borrow this definition to begin this blog. There is no one-shot formula for success; in other words, there is not any particular model to pinpoint that if you follow that model you will become successful. Nonetheless, there are certain ingredients that are common in any formula that makes a person successful in life. Let me list a few of them: goal, determination, passion, hard work, perseverance, discipline, humility, attitude of positivity and receptiveness. These ingredients are common terms as there are enough literature talking about them. Through this blog, I will make an attempt to define them. 

Goal is the output that one sets as the final destination before one begins the journey toward success. We have no goal but goals in life, and at the same time, goals are parts of a bigger GOAL of, say , progress or happiness, or whatever you choose.

Determination is the consequent-resolve arising from the realization that any shortfall in our capabilities vis-a-vis what the goal demands needs deliberate efforts to work on all possibilities to shorten the shortfall. The cumulative sum of our capabilities to reach a goal can not be taken for granted. Our capabilities need either sharpening or adding up or both, and it does not happen naturally but with deliberate efforts.

Hard work is putting in effort on mission-mode, devoid of laziness and procrastination. Laziness is overt aversion to do a work, with individual not necessarily knowing about such self-limiting trait. Procrastination is an act that gives momentous feel-good but false hope to a person that he/she will do the-task-on-hand later. Thus, laziness is remaining knowingly or unknowingly inoperative while procrastination is knowingly going to an inoperative state with uncertainty of when. Hardworking people hardly have laziness and procrastination in their character repertoire.

Perseverance is the non-competing edge of hope over faith without faith getting relegated. Faith is the present while hope sands for the future, and both are mutually inclusive. Hope is the energy that enables us to visualize a better-than-present future, and the strength of this energy is a manifestation of our intrinsic confidence — faith — in our capabilities.

Discipline is the ability to successfully negotiate the ambivalence between willingness and laziness in favor of the former, and intrinsic to this successful negotiation is the respectful adherence to self-established norms and rules.

Humility: When knowledge conquers us we become arrogant, but arrogance is replaced by humility when we conquer knowledge. Arrogance is “I-with-extra” feeling resulting from accumulation of knowledge or wealth or both, and most of us are prone to it. And if we can take that extra out, we can remain humble. How do we do it? Instate and reinstate the following thought into your character: I am NOT more or less with the knowledge acquired and/or wealth accumulated though I possess both knowledge and wealth.

Positivity: Everything has got pleasant and unpleasant sides. Attitude of positivity is the ability to absorb and reflect only the pleasant side. Merits of being in a positive mindset can be highlighted by looking at the deadly nature of the way negativity works in a person.

Unabated state of being in bitterness makes bitterness no more bitter, and this state is broken only when we get exposed to sweetness. This is exactly how negativity works in us; a person with a fixed negative mindset will continue to see everything only in a negative way until the person himself/herself realizes the state that she/he is in, and this realization comes from an eye-opening incident which can be a pleasant one or a tragedy.

It is important to keep ourselves away from negative people. We should cut such people off from our thoughts and daily life. Let me explain it with an example. Sometimes, we come across this: “The link is not available,” when we search for something or someone on the web, and even the repeated search attempts gives the same result. There is a lesson for us in it: in life, we come across many people — some masquerading as our friends and relatives — who are breeding grounds of negative thoughts and actions like jealousy, hatred, back-talking, etc. They knowingly or unknowingly make these toxic assets contagious to our lives and pollute us, many a time without our conscious reckoning. Just avoiding them is not enough to insulate us but complete erasing, like the web does, of such people from our lives is the best way to prevent their negativism deviating us from our journey of success.

Receptive to new ideas: I happened to read this somewhere: ‘We are students till the last day of our life.” Receptiveness can not be explained in a better way than this. The biggest hindrance to being receptive to new ideas is our false feeling of being perfect. Perfection is the progression from the accepted-norm to a point where you find a way to improvise the variable for which the norm is set, and the moment you find one way to improvise, door opens for another way. These openings happen only if we are open to embrace new ideas and knowledge that show up before us, irrespective of whether they are coming from our friends or foes.

So we are here. Success is a journey to a goal through hard work combined with determination, perseverance, discipline, humility, positivity and receptiveness. That’s it. No. Isn’t something missing? Determination, but, how do we remain determined till we reach our goal? Hardworking, but, how do we maintain ourselves on that hardworking-mode till we succeed? Similarly, for other variables like discipline, perseverance, etc. Yes, something is missing. And it is passion.

Passion is the fuel that energizes you to remain determined; to remain hardworking; not to give up but to persevere; be disciplined; be grounded; be positive; and be receptive. Where does this fuel of energy come from? From the present-value of the future satisfaction of accomplishment of goal. So let me define success as a passionate journey to a set-goal through hard work reminded by determination and aided and guided by perseverance, discipline, humility, positivity and receptiveness.