Sunday, October 3, 2010

The urge to succeed




"How did you become this successful ? " a young boy asks Socrates - the Greek philosopher. Socrates takes this boy to a near by river and the drowns the boy's head into the flowing water. The boy tries to set himself free to gasp some air but Socrates tightens his grip over the boy's neck. After two minutes the boy through his effort gets himself released from the clutches of the philosopher and the pale turned boy looks up to Socrates in disdain. Socrates grins at the boy and says " what did you want when you were underwater "? "Air" - the boy replies. Socrates with a stern voice says "if you want success as badly as you wanted air, you will succeed".

The above four lines means a whole lot in one's life - if one can draw parallels to the story - If success is treated as the only thing for survival, then success is guaranteed. Success should never be an option, it should be the prerogative. There should always be a craving in you to succeed in whatever you do.

Success means different things to different people - If you are an archer try to become William Tell, if you are an aspiring football player - Messi should be your pick, or when it comes to tech stuff - Never settle for anything less than Steve Jobs or if you are the business of stock markets - Soros should be your benchmark.
Always pick a person whom you can associate with and slowly march towards them and one day you will definitely get past them.

Success is not attained sitting on a La-Z-Boy recliner - it is achieved by greased shirts. Success is not easy - the windows auto-correct for success is "hard-work" and unstinted devotion to the goal. There was once an art Connoisseur who is immensely moved by the master's depiction of the guernica bombing by the Germans - and exclaims " I would give my life for creating such a master-piece". Master in his mellowed voice replies " I did give".

That is the degree of hard-work we are talking about. There are about half a billion babies added to the planet every year. Only a handful of them grow up to be achievers. what makes them different from the rest? the answer is simple - hard work and more hard work.

We are living in a world where free-thought is highly revered. A person's intellects fetches more ROI than a block of cash. Google was born in a garage in Menlo Park in 1996 as a project in the Stanford University. The initial funding for Google was a $ 100,000 check from Andy Bechtolsheim, Co-founder of Sun Microsystems. Today Google is worshiped and is currently a $ 166 billion company. Google is a classic example of where your intellect can take you.

Mere survival in this world without leaving a mark is an insult to the creator. Japan after the nuclear debacle has come a long way to be the country with second largest foreign exchange reserve in the world of $ 1 trillion. All this was built from shambles. If Japan can do it - why not anyone?

An urge to succeed supported by a strong will will lead us to glory!