Most people think success comes from good luck or enormous talent, but many successful people achieve their accomplishments in a much more mundane way: through self-discipline. What success actually is, we must know that. I asked one of the student of class 10th (who twice was jailed also), what do you want in life? He said; I just want to be happy, I then asked what are you then going to do, to be happy? He said; I want to become a criminal as I want people to bow before me. I was not shocked but a bit sad, as this is how we are leading our youth. All of our actions depends on our value system, which represents our ethics and character. The thing which we value more becomes our mentor and lead us to the paths which we never thought of. We are not born with a particular value system. As we grow, we as kids observe our parents, our teachers, our friends and society as whole then decide upon what we want from life and what things we value more. Our value system decides our attitude (the whole of a person). There are three factors which are the foundation of the attitude:
1. Environment,
2. Experience and
3. Education. These are called the triple Es of attitude.
I believe that boy and all those who want to be happy at the cost of hurting the feelings of others, have faced same kind of environment and have same experiences and moral education. For them success is in controlling but all of them lack one thing and that’s the “true Joy”. I met with many of the people who had same kind of aspirations and some of them even were successful at that , when I asked whether they are happy with what they do – all of them replied they never wanted their life to be like this but society pushed them to do so. So we are heading and leading our society on track where they no longer will be happy. I personally believe in what Albert Einstein one said, “A literate but uneducated is a trained dog, we should become man of value and not man of success”. What’s the benefit of money or position leadership if we are not happy?
Success is the state of mind. It has nothing got to do with possessions. Research consistently shows it is not successful people who are happy but it is happier people who are successful.
So what’s success then? If it’s not financial independence, social tag, or position leadership. Success is what Jack Canfield (motivator, instructor, teacher and author of dozens of books on self-help) defined. He defined success as, being able to live your life in your own way, doing only those things that you want to do, with the people you chose and in the situations you desire.
Success is the state of mind. It has nothing got to do with possessions. Research consistently shows it is not successful people who are happy but it is happier people who are successful. In a book ‘the How of happiness’, Sonja Lyubomirsky classified cause of happiness into three major categories:
1. Life circumstances, which account only for 10%,
2. Genetics, it accounts for 50% and
3. Behavior, which accounts for 40% of our happiness.
Imagine! We spend most of our time on the thing which hardly matters, what matters for happiness is behavior i.e. how we are to people. Happiness is directly or indirectly related with our relationships with the people and happier people put more time and effort into their relationship with other people.
According to sociologist Dr. Edward Benfield; successful people are long term thinkers and make a habit of doing the things that unsuccessful people don’t like to do and the things that successful people don’t like to do are the same things that failure don’t like to do either, but successful people do them anyway. What I have observed is that (I might be wrong in it, it’s just my personal belief) there are three major problems with the youth (and student in particular) of today;
1. They are great starters but not good finishers as they procrastinate due to lack of perseverance.
2. They don’t believe in their abilities as they spend most of their time with negativity and they blame others for not doing the things which they want to.
3. They are excited by easy paths and hence they morally degrade themselves by doing the things which will not lead them anywhere.
All the three problems grow from the same root: lack of self-discipline. Self-discipline is not only in getting up early in the morning but it is “the ability to do what you should do, when should you do it, whether you feel like it or not”.
So what is magic word for success? Well, I think I would prefer the formula of Kop Kopmayer (inspiring guru) who wrote 4 books on success each with 250 success mantras, but at the end, in one of his seminar he said I discovered one thousand success principles but none will work if they are not practiced through self-discipline. I will wrap up by the quote of one of the dynamic and famous Persian Sufi poet Maulana Rumi (r.a) who said: “Being lazy is short road to death, being diligent is the way of life”.
——-(The author an engineering pass out of SSM College of Engineering & Technology has contributed this article. The views are his personal)
