Everyone wants to be successful in life, but only those persons achieve success who strive for it with full dedication, skill, and labor. Even hard work by itself is not sufficient for success. Dedication and skill are equally important. Commitment should be such that the person’s mind and eyes never deviate from the goal. Talent is essential to give refinement and finesse to work. After that, it is hard labor and effort which pave the path on which a person treads to success.
Thus, all three inputs – dedication, skill, and labor – are required to equip a person on the path to success. A person who tries to achieve success on the strength of only one of these three attributes gets only partial success. For example, if he has the dedication, he will, of course, keep working ceaselessly but only half-heartedly and without much effort. If he is deficient in the required skill, the work done would be partial and unsatisfactory.If the person has the skill for a particular work and knows how to do that work efficiently, but he has neither devotion nor exerts much for it, he will fail. On the other hand, a person strives hard but lacks dedication and knowledge, he would not be able to stick to the work for long. For lack of commitment, his striving will be without whole heart in it. He, too, will achieve only truncated success at best.
Many times, no hard labor is required for success. Such hard labor is indeed necessary for those who are new to the field of endeavor. But for those familiar with the work field and have already achieved some level of skill in that field, the requirement is only concentration with some effort. No backbreaking exertion is needed for them.
Another element is direction. If the direction of the effort is not correct, even the most sincere and enduring effort will be nullified. For example, if we want to dig a well for water, we have to dig deep in one place. Digging, of course, is a work of hard labor. But if one is ignorant of the entire process and knows only that he has to dig earth for extracting water, what will happen? He might keep cutting the ground horizontally rather than vertically. He will then dig a drain, not a well. So, the effort for success must be in the right direction; otherwise, the right result will elude us.
It is often seen that when people start working for success, they keep too much worrying about the result. This concern is all the more visible in a sport or classroom. In sports, there are several teams, each playing for the win. Lakhs of people are watching the game. Win or loss becomes a matter of great prestige and big money. But the fact is that only one person or team will win and occupy first place. There is simply no room for two there — ditto for any school or university class. Only one can be a topper in every class or discipline.
“Don’t aim for success if you want it; just do what you love and believe in, and it will come naturally. – David Frost”
If a player is too much concerned with the result, he is under tension. In this mental condition, he can neither enjoy the game nor play his spontaneous style. In other words, he is unable to give his full in the right direction. There is a strong chance that he would lose because victory in a game comes to those who are not only skilled but who also play with their natural flow while enjoying the effort and not bothering about the result. Hence, the mind must be kept calm and peaceful without much worry in any endeavor. Only a mind in peace works at its maximum efficiency level.
It is often seen that people are casual and of fleeting mind during work. In this condition, the body cannot devote total energy to the task at hand, which affects the final result. If the person is always thinking of win or success, the mind remains under constant pressure. There is always a conflict in the mind whether the labor being done is fruitful or not, whether success will come or not, whether he will win or not? By keeping the mind under such stress, the person cannot show his natural talent in any play or his efficiency in any other work. He does not remain his natural self. Consequently, he has to face defeat or failure.Students invariably remain under stress during examination time. This is because the result determines whether their laborious study in the previous year or semester will be reflected in the result or not. This constant anxiety about the result keeps them under continuing pressure.
In a sport, apart from the prestige of win heavy prize money is also involved. This generates constant stress in the mind of the players and the team leader. The team members do not play for the sake of enjoyment but for winning the prize and for fame.
If they win, they become overjoyed; if they lose, they become sad and mournful. They keep thinking that all the hard labor done by them has gone in vain. But the fact is that any work done by a person never goes futile. It always imparts some lessons or the other. It brings to the fore the weaknesses and deficiencies which, if removed, could lead to success.
Hence for success, it is essential that the person keeps his mind calm and relaxed, does not bother much about the win, tries to learn from past mistakes, and thus devotes himself with total energy and concentration on the execution of the work rather than on its outcome. ◙No man succeeds without a good woman behind him, wife or mother. If it is both, he is twice blessed indeed.– Godfrey Winn“Success is the sum of small efforts – repeated day in and day out. – Robert Collier”
Source: Akhand Jyoti Magazine May-June 2021
