The Price of Success

Success principles always remain the same.They never change.

Well, if the above statements are true, then have you ever wondered why only a selected few % of people enjoy the fruit of success while the majority lot quit the journey much before they could taste success. If success rules and principles have remained the same and are easily accessible to anyone, then what stops most of us from just following the rules and go and achieve success.

One of the most common reasons that i have realized over the years as to why most people cannot see success is that they never understand the fact that success will never come in the first or the second attempt. It is very rare if it does. But for most of us, it might take numerous attempts before we can finally succeed. How many attempts? I have no idea. But successful are those who "keep trying till whatever time it takes to succeed". Focus on the words "whatever time it takes". It is not the number of attempts or the number of failures. It is as many times as needed, which essentially means that failure is never a choice. If you have that kind of mindset that failure is not a choice and you are ready to do whatever it takes to be successful, that is when you would be able to taste success.

It is very well said that "Winners never quit and Quitters never win".

To explain this fact, let us just forget the goal of your life or your current success criteria for the moment. Let us take the simplest of things in your life, and see whether you succeeded in the 1st or the 2nd attempt or you kept trying for as many attempts as needed to succeed. You will realize that, in most cases, it would be the latter. 

Remember when you started to learn walking or you tried learning to tie your shoe lace or when you started to write the first few alphabets of a new language. Unless you were born with exceptional talent, it would have taken you humongous effort and an undying spirit to succeed in any of these goals. Well, the big difference was that you were neither ever short of a positive mindset, nor were you bound by any thought restrictions at that age. So, the success that you achieved, even for relatively smaller goals at that age, was after numerous failures and countless unsuccessful attempts, but the essential principle that you followed (may be unknowingly) was that you kept trying till you succeeded. 

Continuing to try unless you achieved your goal is what i call as the "price for success".

Having understood that we have to pay the price for success and we would definitely achieve our goal one day if we keep striving, then the next question that might come to your mind is that why can't everyone pay the price and achieve success. 

Well, attempting success in your goals of life today is slightly more complex than the goal of learning to tie a shoe lace. Not only that, the environment within and around you has also changed. This change also does not help you in your journey by any means. 

It is not difficult to introspect and realize what has changed from our childhood till now. A few of those changes are as follows. These changes are applicable to most of us unless we have made sincere attempts to overcome them.

1) You have picked up a lot of negative thought process in the journey from your childhood, so you have relatively less faith in yourself and your abilities today, than what you used to have at that age.

2) You would be lucky to get someone to encourage  you in your failures at this age. You had your parents with you when you were a child. They would applaud you even if you tied the shabbiest of the shoe lace, as long as you made an honest attempt. How many such appreciations do you receive today, whether in your personal or professional life,  when you fail in any sincere attempt?

3) You have forgotten to dream and have relinquished the belief that you can ever achieve them. This is perhaps the most unfortunate happening in your life, and this trait might just take the longest to inculcate back in you. It took me something like reading thousands of self help books, listening to hundreds of audio tapes from the most successful  folks around the world, meeting hundreds of positive minded people, attended uncountable seminars before that seed of dreaming germinated back.You would not find these people around you. You will have to go and make sincere dedicated attempts to search for them.

4) You have not identified the goal or the mission of your life.

To achieve success, you will have to overcome all this negativity that you  picked up over the last few decades. It is not easy to do that. 

Most people want to be successful, but so few are ready to pay the price. The moment you identify your goal and start your journey, you will start encountering failures. Paying the price would be picking yourself up, time and again, until you succeed. Some of us will do this for a while, a few of us will do for a while longer, but a very few of us will consistently do this until they succeed.

The winners in life keep trying long after losers have given up. They never never never give up.

This is what paying the price is all about.

As i sign off this article, i remember some of the famous quotations that had a big impact in my life and helped me overcome some of those negative traits (and in fact also convert this negative energy to positive energy) i picked up during my journey from childhood till this age,

"Success will not lower its standard to us.  We must raise our standard to success."

"One who does not accept defeat from his heart in spite of not being powerful, he can never be defeated."

Cheers

Manoj Arora