Success Sutra

 

What do you think you need to succeed in life? Hard work? Intellect or ability? Luck? Perhaps we need all of these to make a name for ourselves in the family and society at large — and most significantly, to discover the essence of our life and existence. This piece will examine these three factors as the means to success as opposed to sifting it through as the end to speculate on its substance. Precisely, there will be no utterance on Bill Gates or Anil Ambani but how the path to success is seen, by virtue of the three factors, from a personal experience.

There are several adjectives to describe a hard-working person, albeit their nuances make a difference. A peep into any workplace gives us terse, and often witty perspectives on how this quality is valuable or unproductive. Some would pray for stronger backs than for lighter burdens, but again, “If hard work were really a virtue,” according to others, “then asses would be saints.” From these opposing views arise the varying shades, which dictate whether your effort will reward you or makes you swear secretly to your boss and openly to your family members plus friends for your wasted efforts.

So it's a bit of a tincture of working hard and 'using' the mind, literally, in your daily life. And this is where intellect or ability — two words that are used interchangeably to mean intelligence — comes into play. The blend of these factors has developed a term 'smart work' for your career instead of hard work. Self-help books are abundant, and so are the management gurus offering you ways from how you can concentrate in your studies to improve your emotional intelligence. How do you do it? Jack Canfield, Dale Carnegie, Norman Vincent Peale and Daniel Goleman are some of the popular names that you can refer to for your literature. But how you do this is quite subjective; and unexpectedly, several self-help books are taking the flak for their tedium and sheer volumes in the market. The bottom line is: you have to chart your own way to progress.

And now is the time for the next big thing. Luck. It depends on how you see it:

“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”
Seneca

“I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.”
Thomas Jefferson

“Luck is what you have left over after you give 100 percent.”
Langston Coleman

“Luck is the idol of the idle.”
Proverb

Grossly unscientific or blessed with good luck, it is quite open to question as 'luck' goes under the scanner of philosophy — which divides it according to a proscriptive sense and a descriptive sense. But how do you differentiate yourself from Narayan Murthy's son or Lakshmi Mittal's daughter? Of course, you can sympathise with the above quotes if you feel dispirited and likewise see yourself when you combine it with the two factors we have noted earlier. No doubt, you will be living the life of a star — that's a law of the nature — even if you were not born under a lucky star.

So, it's fusion. So elementary, Mr Watson. But you have to act now.