Chasing Success? Cease Giving In To Failures 

By Shreeprakash Sharma

We speak about successes and what spontaneously crops up in our mind is the milieu of great happiness and rejuvenation achieved after perseverance, hard labour, indomitable courage, persistent practice. We succeed in our efforts to achieve something which we dote on and dream about and this accomplishment brings much-expected joy and sincerely gladdens our heart. But the roadmap of the stories of successes is not as simple as we perceive to be. The success passes through a labyrinth of travails and agonies. Success passes through a series of failures. More of the fiascos means more of the victories, more of the applauds. No failure means no learning, no lesson and ultimately no triumph.

There is no denying the fact that everyone wants to succeed in this world. In fact, there is nothing weird about this aspiration. It is natural and one of the most inherent traits of the Homo sapiens. But achieving success or getting what we want in life happens to be a tough nut to crack. It is never the matter of sheer wishes and fantasies. In fact, success in any domain of life has its own conspicuous and rigid regimen which the aspirants need to follow religiously and strictly. It is also the matter of how intensely we chase for it and how earnestly we long for it. 

Success also depends upon how patiently and persistently we keep on trying to reach out to the most-cherished goal of our life. So one thing is pretty clear: success calls for hard labour, indomitable patience and undying efforts. More than anything else, the realization of one’s most beautiful dreams also requires us not to give in to a series of failures which may befall us onto the path of trying for it.

But the greatest tragedy of human life is that the earnestness with which dreams are pursued in the beginning unfortunately goes on dwindling later on with the passage of time. This turns out to be what we may call the Achilles’ heel of all successes and laurels in life. Have you ever seriously thought why the pace of making efforts to succeed goes on dissipating with each passing day? After all what ails the sustenance mechanism and paradigm of endeavours that restricts our steps from moving consistently onto the path of success? We need to make an honest soul-searching about this fatal mental block which makes us inert, inactive and consequently we fall into the permanent sloth of not making further efforts to achieve the goal of our life.

In fact, when we fail to accomplish something worthwhile for which we plan so meticulously and prepare so painstakingly, then we instantaneously get frustrated and depressed. This further results in shattering all hopes and optimism. Again, we get hamstrung by a slew of negative, pessimistic, self – doubting and demotivating thoughts. We start underestimating ourselves. Our psycho – mental strength and physical capabilities seem to have fallen to the nadir. Our self-esteem goes on continuously plummeting down to a newer low. We start assuming ourselves to be the most undeserving person on the earth. Such self-demoralizing, self-doubting and self-effacing pseudo-perceptions prove to have lethal repercussions on our mental poise. 

At this crossroads, we need to be more cautious and conscientious. What is to be kept in mind is the fact that failures are the inevitable part of all phenomena which keep on occurring at regular intervals in life. No one can escape this inevitable phase of journey of what we call successes in life. Failures show us our follies, our inherent weaknesses and a lot of other obstacles which restrain us from making efforts to succeed. Thomas Alva Edison, the world known US inventor’s quote “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work” reflects a very precious lesson that defeats do not mean decimation. Failures do not mean the end of the world. We fail and it helps learn a lot of vital lessons to ultimately become successful. But for this perception we need to possess a very hard bent of mind. So it is essential to keep on learning from failures and consistently strengthening and striving hard to finally succeed in life.

The famous US social rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” Rejections and failures are natural procedures to finally appear as a successful person in all walks of life. Ceasing to struggle due to disappointment brought forth from the very first failure means killing all the possibilities of successes in their embryo itself. The great Chinese philosopher Confucius had once said, “Our greatest glory is in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”  Failing in one’s effort to succeed does only signify that the efforts were not made with flawless planning and sincere perseverance. This does not mean lack of intelligence, talent or otherwise. Failures lay out the renewed opportunities for chalking out the road maps for the more flawless and sincere efforts for final success. 

Denis E. Waitley, the famous American motivational speaker, very nicely explains the importance of failures in human life when he says, “Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.” We fail because we fail to learn the valuable lessons from the failure. We fail because we fail to assess our strengths and analyze our weaknesses. We fail because we so easily give in to the disappointment and depression without fighting and struggling with it. 

We must admit that life is an odyssey of a series of sagas of ups and downs, successes and failures. Hoping for success without undergoing the inevitable pangs of failures is tantamount to living in a fool’s paradise. Failures notwithstanding, we must never quit, we must never succumb to pessimism and self- doubt. This is what makes the time-tested secrets of success – never quit, never surrender and, at most, never stop trying to succeed despite failures and frustrations galore.

• The author is Principal PM Shri School Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya 

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