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- Herausgeber: V&S Publishers
- Kategorie: Ratgeber
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
How to come out a winner in the face of heavy odds
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© Copyright: ISBN 978-935-05721-7-7
DISCLAIMER
While every attempt has been made to provide accurate and timely information in this book, neither the author nor the publisher assumes any responsibility for errors, unintended omissions or commissions detected therein. The author and publisher make no representation or warranty with respect to the comprehensiveness or completeness of the contents provided.
All matters included have been simplified under professional guidance for general information only without any warranty for applicability on an individual. Any mention of an organization or a website in the book by way of citation or as a source of additional information doesn't imply the endorsement of the content either by the author or the publisher. It is possible that websites cited may have changed or removed between the time of editing and publishing the book.
Results from using the expert opinion in this book will be totally dependent on individual circumstances and factors beyond the control of the author and the publisher.
It makes sense to elicit advice from well informed sources before implementing the ideas given in the book. The reader assumes full responsibility for the consequences arising out from reading this book. For proper guidance, it is advisable to read the book under the watchful eyes of parents/guardian. The purchaser of this book assumes all responsibility for the use of given materials and information. The copyright of the entire content of this book rests with the author/publisher. Any infringement/ transmission of the cover design, text or illustrations, in any form, by any means, by any entity will invite legal action and be responsible for consequences thereon.
Contents
Preface
The desire to bask in the glory of success is inherent in all human beings. Why do then some reach the peak of success and others are pushed into obscurity? A facile reply will be: They are darlings of destiny. Those who develop this brand of psyche are wedded to inaction which needless to say is the mother of failure. As a matter of fact we get what we deserve. In other words, fortune favours the prepared mind. This is by no means an ideal syrupy preaching. A peep into the lives of great personages bears testimony to the fact that fruits of labour are sweeter than gifts of fortune. This book intends to develop self-awareness in people and help them evolve their respective strategies and vision which may be enshrined thus: Intelligence and diligence are our best guarantors of success.
Most articles included in this volume were written by me years ago and appeared in magazines like Caravan (now Alive), Mirror, Art of Living, Careers Digest, Current Events, Social Welfare etc. I feel immensely indebted to them for publishing these articles.
I also owe a measure of gratitude to my borther-in-law Devki Nandan Sharma, who though much younger than me, had the wisdom to put me on the right track in my early life and his sister Janak Dulari my wife, who sustained my academic endeavours. Pustak Mahal, publishers of this book too deserve to be highly appreciated for their earnest desire and effort to bring out this volume early.
O.P. Sharma
Are You Afraid of Your Mistakes?
Each day is a fresh day—look at it with hope and enthusiasm. Yesterday is over. Why not remove the garbage from your mind?
Only gods are infallible. Human beings, however intelligent, are liable to err. So we should learn to take mistakes in our stride and should not allow them to overwhelm us.
Mistakes are essential to progress. G.B. Shaw once said, “Man learns to skate by staggering, making a fool of himself. Indeed, he progresses in all things by resolutely making a fool of himself.” From cave-life to modern civilised life is a story of trial and error. The people in the preceding ages, undaunted by the fear of mistakes, made inventions and discoveries that constitute the glory of modern civilisation.
Each time Nimmi, Kamla’s 14-year old daughter, expresses her desire to prepare vegetables, her mother prevents her by saying, “You will spoil it.” Kamla’s does not realise that her daughter cannot become expert in cooking without spoiling vegetables or burning a loaf. Parents should show tolerance when their children make mistakes. They should not resort to frequent snubbing to prevent the child from making mistakes.
Excessive scolding serves no useful purpose. It shatters the child’s confidence and makes him peevish. It will not be surprising if he starts despising his parents. Let children do things and profit by the mistakes they make in the process. Not to allow your children to do things for fear of mistakes is to handicap their development.
Some persons do not take up a job on the plea that there are already superior persons in the profession. They conclude that the presence of the superior persons will spell their failure. They do not pause for a moment to think that the superior persons did not achieve perfection in their skill overnight. They, too, had to pass through a series of trials and errors before they could attain their present enviable positions. This should be enough to make beginners immune from the fear of being ridiculed by the superior persons. As a matter of fact, persons having superior skill do not ridicule the efforts of beginners. Only those who have remained imperfect due to their waywardness ridicule others.
If you have any plan to implement, do not be afraid of discussing it with your friends. If they point out any defects in your plan, you should not take it as jealousy on their part. Weigh their opinions objectively. It is quite possible that their advice may make your plan still better.
If you make a mistake, have the moral courage to acknowledge it and put it right. Mistakes do little harm if they are acknowledged and corrected without delay. Let mistakes remain unattended and they wil do untold harm to the task in hand and your reputation. Concealment of an error is no less undesirable. In case you camouflage your mistakes, you will have to resort to desperate lying to make your position invulnerable. When your lies are known to others which is only a matter of time, your dignity will be injured even more.
Nobody despises a person who has the moral courage to admit that he is wrong and is immediately prepared to rectify the error. What can you say to a person who candidly admits, “I beg your pardon. You are right, I misunderstood you. Please let me set the matter right.”
It is bad to shift responsibility on to others for your own failures. Among students this tendency is often very marked. When they fail in an examination, they put the blame either on the teacher for his inefficient teaching or the fate. They never admit that they failed for lack of preparation. Some bosses make their subordinates scapegoats when their plans prove a flop. But when these succeed they pat only themselves and deny any credit to the subordinates. When we want to take credit for the success of a thing, we ought to bear responsibility for its miscarriage, too. To disown responsibility for failures is cowardice.
Brooding over past mistakes cripples positive thinking and creates unnecessary tension in the mind. You will do well to clear out the garbage of past mistakes from your mind. Begin next day’s work with a fresh mind and vigour. You will surely find the way to success and happiness smooth.
Put Your Emotions to Work
Emotions can increase your happiness and pleasure in life, or they can be blighters of joy and kill all incentive—the choice is all yours!
We all have emotions. They are inseparable from our life, just as fragrance is from a flower. They vitally affect our happiness. So we should learn to control them properly.
Emotions are of two types—good and bad. Good emotions make our personality attractive and increase happiness. We should cultivate them. Bad emotions prove blighters of happiness and killers of efficiency. We need to discard them.
Do you want to be loved and respected? You do. Then you should learn to like others. Respect the sentiments of the people around you and do not fail to appreciate their achievements when occasion demands. Genuine appreciation is a double blessing. It wins others’ love and inspires the recipient to further achievements.
One day, my wife prepared some tasty dishes for dinner. I silently enjoyed the food. After a few moments, she asked me if I had not liked the dishes. I at once realised my folly and complimented her on her cooking. She beamed all over with joy.
Love is of great importance in all human relations. It is for the sake of love that parents suffer for their children, patriots make great sacrifices for their country, and people help follow-beings distressed by floods and earthquakes.
Other emotions which contribute to our happiness are courage, hope and patience. In all big enterprises of life, courage is essential. If a person does not acquire this quality, he will have to be content with modest achievements only. Fortune favours the brave.
There is none who can claim immunity from failures. Failures bring a lot of misery in their wake. In such circumstances, it is the oar of hope that takes one’s boat out of troubled waters. You can draw ambitious plans, but without patience you cannot carry them out. You can well imagine the consequences of the fiasco of a big business venture in which you showed lack of patience halfway.
Fear, anger and hate should not be allowed free play. Otherwise these can wreck our happiness.
Fear undermines courage and paralyses action. It flings open the gates of misery. I know of a young man who did not take his examination several times for fear of failure. On every occasion, he found one excuse or the other to justify his action. He complained that his mind did not work properly. In fact, nothing was wrong with his mind. He had developed the habit of distrusting his mental faculty.
He can pull himself out of this unfortunate situation only through adequate preparation and then going through the examination with confidence. By avoiding the examination, he cannot hope to change failure into success.
There is the case of a young woman who had miscarried several times. Some of her acquaintances continue to din into her ears that maternity is a risky thing. They often quote instances of women who have lost their lives in child birth. She now finds herself quite diffident to face the situation. For many years she had been deprived of the pleasure of having a child. She should tell herself that she will survive maternity just as women who advise her have survived. The best course to conquer fear is to face the object of fear with courage.
Anger is another negative emotion. It paralyses thinking. A man who has not tamed anger creates a social desert around him. There is an elderly woman in our neighbourhood who flares up at the slightest provocation. She scolds her children and servants for mere trifles. She has converted her house into a virtual hell. Her servants and children are happy if she is away even for a day. Last year, her son and daughter-in-law came to spend their holiday with her. But even they were unable to put up with her temper and left after a few days.
Vijay opened a general merchant’s shop at a most advantageous point in our city. Everyone thought that he would be a success soon. For a few months, it ran smoothly and seemed to fulfil their expectations. But suddenly his business ran into rough weather. Vijay started quarrelling with his customers and sometimes abused them if after seeing his goods they did not purchase them. Naturally, people did not like his treatment and withdrew their patronage. Ultimately he had to close the shop.
If you want to lead a socially happy life you should not hate your fellow-beings. If people around you feel that you hate them, your company will repel them like acrid smoke. If you are a business executive you cannot hope to get co-operation of your subordinates by hating them. If you resort to punitive measures against them there is every possibility of their going on a strike. This can put even your job in jeopardy.
Love succeeds where money and punishment fail. Of course hate is an intractable emotion. It is not easy to root it out. But you can surely get along with others smoothly by keeping it under leash.
But this does not mean that you should totally inhibit your emotions. In fact, total suppresion of emotions is as bad as indulging in emotional sprees.
By suppressing emotions completely, you will make many good aspects of your life charmless. For example, you cannot subtract feelings from marriage, friendship and work. It is the emotion of love that keeps the spouses together after their sexual desire is satisfied. So is the case with friendship. You meet a good many people in your life, but only a few become your friends and others remain mere acquaintances. It is because you share your feelings only with those who are your friends. If you involve yourself emotionally in some work, it becomes a pleasure rather than drudgery.
On the other hand, overplaying of emotions is also undesirable. For instance, some people in their moments of failure try to attract others’ attention by arousing self-pity. By doing so, they often make themselves the object of ridicule rather than sympathy. If you have suffered failure in one sphere, you can comfort yourself by thinking of your success elsewhere. But you shoud avoid enlisting the sympathy of others unnecessarily.
One prefers the company of good persons because it brings happiness. So is the case with good emotions. Why not live with them! It is easy to cultivate good emotions. Dwell on the desired emotion in thought, see it as desirable and you will possess it. When you have acquired the wished-for emotion, half the battle is won.
Prosperous and happy people have consciously cultivated good emotions and tamed bad ones. They have not received the gift of good emotions from God. Ask them; they will confirm it.
How to Like Your Work
Not the criticism of your job, environment or colleagues, etc., but keen interest in work will help you to go up…
Men and women have to work for a living. Most of them work only for material gain, while others work not only for material gain but also for the pleasure they derive from the work they do.
Two factors determine one’s attitude to work: the amount of work and one’s ablity. Excess of work is certainly irksome. However energetic a man may be, he cannot work like an automaton. If a person has adequate skill for a job, he will do it efficiently and joyfully. If he is not so equipped, he will do the job inefficiently. Such a person will be a liability to his employer rather than an asset. It will not be surprising if the employer gets rid of him soon.
While choosing a vocation, you should keep in view your ability. Young people are often tempted by certain jobs because they are lucrative. They completely ignore the requirements of the job and take a headlong plunge. The consequences can be disastrous. It is essential to remember that ambition without talent cannot lead to success.
Rajesh set-up a large motor parts store. He hoped to become a big businessman, but as he had no aptitude for the line, he discovered after a year that nearly half of his investment had disappeared by way of loss.
You should choose a profession after considering its various aspects. Once you have chosen it, stick to it. There are people who get disenchanted with any job they take up and develop an itch to change. Such a disposition is detrimental to success. To climb higher in any profession, you need vast experience and efficiency. You cannot acquire these qualities by changing your profession too frequently. You may, at best, gain preliminary knowledge about other jobs but that will not help you to go up. In this age when specialisation is the universal cry, a jack of all trades and master of none cannot hope to occupy an enviable position.
Love your work. Never condemn it. Love of work fosters the spirit of perseverance. Its rewards are amazing. It is through work that you can realise your ambition. Again, it is work that enables you to show your talent. The achievements of great scientists, artists and social reformers illustrate this point.
Madame Curie was born in Poland at a time when women were not allowed to study science. When she sought admission to Cracow University, she was told that science was not a thing in which women should meddle. She was offered a seat in cookery classes! She went to Sorbonne University in France to study science. Here, after several years of arduous research, she discovered radium and won the Nobel Prize for her unique achievement. She was able to make this outstanding discovery because she was in love with her work and refused to be deterred by difficulties.
Perhaps, the world would have remained afflicted with the curse of malaria if Ronald Ross had not persisted in his research in the face of formidable difficulties. For many years, success eluded him and when at last he found the cause of malaria, he was so weary of the ceaseless toil that he did not appreciate the discovery until he had slept. Nursing would not have become a noble profession for women but for the dedication of Florence Nightingale.
Undesirable Disposition
There are people who go into raptures over the virtues of other jobs but condemn their own. Such a disposition is undesirable. Rakesh is a lecturer in physics. He has brilliant educational qualifications and an impressive personality. All these qualities should have made him a good teacher. But the ten years that he has put in the profession have benefited him little. The reason is that he is absolutely indifferent to his job. He rues the day when he joined the teaching profession. He feeds himself on the illusion that one day he will become a fat salaried manager of some large firm.
Ramesh is a colleague of Rakesh. He joined the profession only three years back, but has already come to be known as an efficient teacher. Not only students but his colleagues recognise his devotion to work.
There are some jobs which do not provide opportunities for advancement of talented persons. If you are placed in such a job, you have a genuine cause for dissatisfaction. But because you are not getting a stimulating and challenging opportunity that your talent demands, you should not try to remedy it by detesting your work. That is no cure. It can only make you unhappy. The way out of such a situation is to keep watching patiently for an opportunity and avail yourself of it when it comes.
Environment also makes work pleasant or unpleasant. Favourable environment inspires a worker to achieve higher efficiency and output. Unfavourable environment dampens all zeal for work. If you are convinced that your environment is extremely inhospitable, you will do well to seek a change. But you should not become over-sensitive to environment. If you do so, you will not feel happy anywhere. That your environment should be free from all irritations. Abraham Lincoln, Gandhi and Nehru would not have succeeded in their goals, had they waited for ideal environment.
You can make your environment tolerable by adapting yourself to it. You should avoid conflict with your colleagues. You should not belittle them. Disparagement of others will trap you in the vicious circle of condemnation and counter-condemnation. Co-operation of your colleagues will go a long way in making your surroundings congenial.
Another important point is that you should not criticise your boss before your colleagues, particularly before those who are intimate with the boss. They are likely to carry tales to gain his favour at your cost. That will embitter your relations with the boss. If you are antagonistic towards your boss, you cannot hope to get any joy out of the job, despite all your ability and efficiency.
Some people feel disenchanted with their jobs because they are not fat-salaried. Mohan is earning Rs 6000 a month. But he is dissatisfied. He thinks that persons of his ability and qualifications are gettig much higher salaries in other professions. He does not consider for a moment the leisure his present job provides him. He utilises his leisure to go on picnics with his family. He also finds time to play games. But he considers all these benefits trivial.
He fails to see that the high-salaried man who is his idol gets little leisure. He rarely joins his family at meals. He cannot go on picnics with his family. A higher salary usually means more tension and worries. Perhaps, no sensible man would like to forgo his peace of mind just to get a few chips more.
