Successful person. Often we speak about the ‘successful person’. If we conduct a survey of students between 17 and 20 years of age and ask what they aspire to be, the most prominent response is likely to be that I want to be successful in life. Probe a little deeper what do they mean by being successful most will start stammering. Ones who’ll respond may say that they want to be like Bill Gates, Sabeer Bhatia, an IAS officer, an army officer, fighter pilot, successful businessman etc. In Indian context at least almost all responses shall be in the context of professional success. Even when we speak with the grown-ups or the people who have seen many more summers, the response shall be in the realm of professional success, depending on who we are, what we aspire to be, what is our field of operation etc.

Then comes the next question – mantra for success. I know that as a student I’d have met many people in the professional field and asked this question to them. I was not alone in this quest. I had many of my friends who used to do the same. But I don’t recollect if I ever got the right answer or an answer that satisfied me.

Having seen many summers, many failures, few small successes, many people around me having tasted many kinds successes and failures, at least my understanding of success and success mantra have undergone amazing changes. So for me the first issue is the definition of success itself. What does the success mean? Is it to be seen only in the context of profession and ability to make money? If that is true, how much money or professional growth will qualify to be called a success? What about a man who after completing his course of medicine has spent his life time treating poor patients but has made no money for himself? What about a person who lost his parents early in life, but managed to take care of all the responsibilities of his family, younger siblings, got them settled and in the end lived a principled middle class life himself? What about a soldier who got injured in war early in in life, became vegetable waist down, but still overcame all odds and started a course on motivation for others? None of these questions have easy answers.

To have another perspective we may try to ask this question to the ‘successful people’. But we twist it slightly to help us understanding the context little more. We ask them two questions – Are they successful? Did they plan and work towards this success or it happened on its own in the due course? Honestly speaking, I’ve not dared to ask this question to even one such person. In any case, I’m not even close enough to anyone to have asked this. But I can presume some of the responses. If you ask Bill Gates I really don’t know if he will even admit that he is a successful man. He has embarked on a very different journey of his own. He may at best say that yes, he has made lot of money, much more than he ever dreamt three decades ago, but he will consider himself successful only after he has eradicated some diseases from the world or something like this. Now let us assume we are asking these questions to the Prime Minister of India. Do we think he will call himself successful? In my view he will count at least ten objectives, all difficult ones, which if achieved he may consider himself partially successful. Obviously, response to the second question will be a resounding ‘no’. He is the Prime Minister of India not because he planned to reach there three decades ago. These two questions may be repeated to any number of ‘successful people’ as per our definition and largely the answers will remain same – I have reached somewhere in life, but much more needs to be done and no, I didn’t plan for it, it happened over a period of time on its own. I just did what I thought was right. Exceptions are always there and will be there, but overwhelming response is likely to be on these lines.

I’ll now give another perspective of success. I received a WhatsApp message few days ago that though Neil Armstrong was the first man to set his foot on the moon, he was not supposed to be the one. First man who got instructions to get down from the spacecraft was Aldrin, but he hesitated for few seconds. Meanwhile Neil got his instructions and he got down immediately. Rest is all history. How many people today know the name of Aldrin or this fact? First man to walk on the surface of moon is Neil Armstrong. Period. This is not an isolated event. This is something that happens innumerable number of times in our lives. Let me just give few examples here. There was a very competent second in command in a company. He deserved every bit to be the CEO. But the incumbent CEO was just few months older than him and till the time he retired there was no vacancy in the corner room. Once he retired, the second in command had a very short tenure left with him due to which it was decided to have a younger CEO who will have clear five years at the helm of the company to steer it. So our man lost the position just by whiskers, for no fault of his. Ask any salaried person who has reached the charmed circle, but not the corner room, if he knows such cases. He will give scores of such examples. Behind every successful CEO there’ll be many smarter, intelligent, competent people who we would never know. We have a very successful person in Mr. Yogi Deveshwar, who has been at the helm of ITC for decades. He has indeed given very good results in his stint with that company. But does it mean that there was never a more competent person than him in that company? No. it can’t be true. It is more likely that those competent people contributed handsomely in Mr. Deveshwar’s successful stay there, though the so called success eluded them. Same may be said about innumerable people in innumerable companies. I just heard that HDFC Bank’s board has given another five years extension to Mr. Aditya Puri as the MD of the bank. He is an amazing professional and one of the rare ones who started a bank and stayed there for more than two decades. But I’m sure the bank is what it is today due to many other unsung heroes. I can continue on and on so far as the examples are concerned, but the central message that I want to say is that for every hero, a successful man, there are many equally competent unsung heroes. The so called success is not something that is in the hands of the person alone. There are many factors that play a role in that and success is not something that needs to be seen in the context of professional peaks a person may or may not have achieved.

My thoughts pull me back to the definition of success once again. Recently there was news that two sons of a rickshaw puller have qualified the IIT entrance exam. How’d my friends and readers who are in the quest of success read it? I really don’t know that, but in my eyes it is stupendous success for father and sons. It’s amazing. In one of my previous articles I had written about Tarak Fateh and Manisha Koirala who won the battle over cancer. I consider this as amazing success. First generation entrepreneurs who have created flipkart etc. are in my view successful people, but who have to struggle now to retain that success with them. I know of a person who has all his life contributed towards the happiness of innumerable people by way of Ayurveda, yoga and acupuncture etc. without taking any significant fee. The person lives a contented and humble life despite not commercialising his skills to make people healthy. I consider that this person has reached pinnacle of success as a human being. Imagine a woman, who’s a daughter, wife, mother, professional all rolled in one, keeps her family happy, united and gives her children highest level of morals and education. She is a very successful person. Think of a pilot who manages an emergency and crash-lands his aircraft and ensures that all passengers are safe. That’s success. Every day we hear about an honest officer who has maintained his integrity amidst all kinds of pressures, though in the process he loses out himself, that’s success. So when we speak about successful people, success mantra, desire for success we need to think on a larger canvas and not only in terms of either money, profession, fame, position etc. We need to know ourselves, our desires, reasons of our pleasures, our shortcomings and then work on that path that makes us happy. Success must remain a by-product of this quest rather than a desire to be successful. Also, in the material world, for success of material kind, we need to have an ability to smell the opportunity and leverage that opportunity. Opportunity doesn’t knock the door twice. But that is a different context and we will discuss it some other day.

My Little Thought Of Life in this context is that people who are chasing success alone are actually chasing a mirage. To chase success one has to decide for himself what is success for him. Even what is success for him is also something that is dynamic and keeps changing with time. And there is nothing that is called a big bang success, because every such success brings you at the doorstep of another quest, another journey, another target, another milestone. To understand success and be successful, one must know that success is in taking small steps, success is in winning bit by bit, sometime winning and sometime losing, success is in progressively reaching higher in the index of self-satisfaction and for others and the society, success is in treating it as a journey and not destination, success is in enjoying the journey irrespective of the fact it is rough or smooth, success is in remaining humble if you reach that higher goal and not being disappointed if you are unable to reach that. Also, that there’s no success mantra other than sincere and hard work and working towards achieving incremental successes.

To all my friends and readers I wish every possible success.