Ankush Sharma
Failure! Yes, you have read right. This write-up will surf you through the various paths leading to the failure. It may seem absurd but believe me, it would make sense in a few minutes read. In fact, it has something crucial to offer to those who are aspiring to achieve success in their lives. Success may have different meanings to different people but the paths leading there have a common and a simple principle i.e. hard work. However, sometimes we have to face failure repeatedly even after the hard work. Why does it happen so? To understand this, we have to divide our work into two types of activities, let’s term them useful and harmful. The useful activities are helping us towards success and others are pulling us back. So it is no wrong to say that useful activities are the answer to the question ‘How to be successful? And harmful activities answer ‘How to be a failure?’ Sometimes our hard work is wrapped up by such harmful habits that destroy its value as well. Hence, knowing the activities leading us to failure can actually help us to be successful. All we have to do is to do away with these activities.
Being born and growing up in a populous country like India is an altogether different experience as compared to the rest of the world. Every minute, dozens of children take birth here, not just to live but to compete as well. Competition is a lifelong companion of every Indian, especially in its urban sphere. It might be true with other countries as well but I am concerned with the Indians. From the very birth to the death, Indians grow through hundreds of competitions, scaling from getting a bed in a hospital for birth to getting a space in the ShamshanGhat /graveyard for the cremation.
At home, the morning rises with the competition of reading the newspapers. Also, the struggle for using the bathroom is not uncommon. The higher levels of struggle start after we step out of our homes. The roads are stowed with vehicles moving in chaos rupturing the traffic rules. The actual struggle starts with the use of public transport. You need good stars to grab a seat in the buses, fully packed with the passengers. Further, a mere mention of Government offices is enough in this context. Either you should have enough time to wait in the long queues or be influential enough to skip the queue. Corruption is also a byproduct of this competition.
In contemporary times, the competition which is on the trend list especially among our youth is about securing a slot that may be on a bus, train, or in a school, college, and most importantly securing a job. Every student since the day s/he enters the school is raced up for the competitions. The competition to get higher grades than friends, to get into a good college after school, then to get a decent job after college;throughout this journey, competition stays with them as a stressful companion. Each time it gets greater and even greater.
Desiring a decent job in India means to get ready for a fierce contest in the competitive exams. These exams call for hard work with the right kind of strategies. Everyone starts preparation with the Google search “How to crack a competitive exam?” Then it surfs through various strategies, books, coaching, and all the things that Google would suggest to do to be successful. Then the suggestion of toppers also holds great importance for the aspirants.
Many aspirants fail to make it possible even after huge suggestions, hard work, and strategies. These failures can contribute to their demoralization but, it kicks open a window to introspect their strategy and the approach towards it. In this process of introspection, many of them would find lacunas in the strategy’s execution realizing that they devoted their precious time in doing not only those things which are important for the success but also those which are not important at all and in fact, they are counterproductive.
Here, we should discuss the suggestions people forced upon the aspirants especially by the successful ones. In this process of getting suggestions, most of the aspirants usually filter out the suggestions of the ones who faced failure with a petty argument that ‘How could their suggestions work for us if it didn’t for themselves.’ So everyone cares for the “Success stories”, nobody gives a damn to the “failure stories”. But it must not be ignored that the failed people have faced multidimensional hurdles in their struggle and are more experienced compared to the toppers especially those who got success early. It is not to say that the toppers are not insightful rather what I mean is that some people have inbuilt brilliance or a good schooling background which might not be everyone’s case. So, it’s the failed people who can actually elucidate the worst struggle scenarios and impediments allowing the aspirants to get prepared from the very start. Toppers are good at teaching the helpful things to do and failed aspirants are good at highlighting the things not to do. Both are equally important.
Now, the most misleading suggestion to the aspirants is to study 6-8 hours a day, but we should know that the time doesn’t matter instead the quantity and quality of study matters. It’s always wise to have a topic or a chapter as a study target of a day or a week rather than having just a time figure which won’t reveal to you the quality of yourstudy. The topic targeted study would make this study-hours idea useless as the hours may vary according to the capability of the person and his grasping power. Also, to explain further, if you start calculating time, then who would decide that you studied religiously in the prescribed time and not spared even a jiff to the distractions? In today’s world, the biggest distraction is the internet. It is a general habit of the students to open the phone while studying for some study purpose like Wikipedia, dictionary, etc. but then most of them end up browsing through social media sites, YouTube and all. It takes a blink to know that hours have passed; pages of the book keep waiting to be turned over. Further, wasting a lot of time talking to friends, eating, playing games in the name of relaxation also jabs the quality study hours. It is not that all such activities should be prohibited; instead, you should remember the fact that everything is helpful only when used in a healthy manner.
The last point is regarding meeting with more and more people. It can also prove harmful by diluting your ideas, hence acting as a demoralizing force. To be more clear on this, you should welcome new ideas to the extent it keeps intact the originality of your thought process. Nobody can succeed with all acquired thoughts; it may mislead or even deviateyou from your goal.
I would finish my write up with a few words about the ones receiving repeated failures. They are the ones who know a list of things that contribute to one’s failure. S/he knows how to handle failures again and again and stay motivated towards the goal. That’s the most precious thing you need to learn from them; that list of activities to ignore and the mantra to not lose hope. At the same time, it no way means, success stories hold no value but the point is failure stories also do. “When you know how to be a failure, you never get a failure.”
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