Unlock the Door to Success

By Ashok Jain

Success seems to be a mixture of personal efforts and luck. Will it not be worthwhile to make personal efforts more effective and also to get a little hold over luck? If we can really do this then that would surely amount to getting hold of the key that can unlock the door to success. According to Webster?s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary, success has been defined as the favourable or prosperous termination of attempts or endeavours. Generally, success marks the attainment of some desired objectives such as wealth, position, honors, or the like. The desired objective may be short term like getting the movie tickets for today?s evening show, medium term like getting admission in a good college after passing out from the school, or long term like trying to fathom the meaning of life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Diamond Books
• Release date: Dec 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9788128822575

Book preview

Success - Taking

A Deeper Look

Success seems to be a mixture of personal efforts and luck. Will it not be worthwhile to make personal efforts more effective and also to get a little hold over luck? If we can really do this then that would surely amount to getting hold of the key that can unlock the door to success.

According to Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary, success has been defined as the favourable or prosperous termination of attempts or endeavours. Generally, success marks the attainment of some desired objectives such as wealth, position, honors, or the like. The desired objective may be short term like getting the movie tickets for today’s evening show, medium term like getting admission in a good college after passing out from the school, or long term like trying to fathom the meaning of life.

Irrespective of the time span of our objective, attainment of success hinges on three pillars.

You need to fix an objective.

Having fixed the objective, you need to get control of the means that you think will enable you to achieve that objective.

All those factors that have a role to play in achievement of the objective but are either beyond your control or have not been taken into consideration by you should be favorably aligned.

If you do not succeed, be sure that there has been some problem with any one or more of the three pillars just mentioned. These three pillars constitute an exhaustive set of parameters that effect success. Let us illustrate the working of these pillars with the help of an example.

Suppose you are residing in Delhi and need to go to Mumbai for some work. Now your objective is fixed, the objective is reaching Mumbai. Next you decide the date of departure and whether you want to go by air, rail or road. Once having decided about the mode of transport you take steps to ensure that the decided mode of transport is available on the decided date of departure. Suppose, you reserve your berth in a train for a particular date. Next step is you pack necessary things and make arrangements for reaching the railway station on the decided date at appropriate time. Once you have done all this, you can feel assured that you will reach Mumbai at the scheduled time of reaching of the train. The train may miss the scheduled time of reaching by a few minutes or hours but if that does not upset your work at Mumbai, you will consider alighting from the train at Mumbai a successful attainment of your objective.

So far you have taken care of only first two pillars of success. What if your reaching the station is delayed due to an unforeseen traffic jam and you miss the train? What if train is blocked at some point by an agitating mob beyond reasonable time? What if the train meets with an accident before reaching Mumbai? Such possibilities can be endless, yet if any one of them materializes you fail to achieve your objective or in other words, the success eludes you. All the factors that fall within this category collectively constitute what we generally call luck or the hand of providence.

The first two pillars involve personal effort and the third pillar is what luck is all about.

From the preceding example, it may seem that we always take care of the first two pillars and there is hardly anything we can do about the third pillar then where is the question of getting hold of that key that unlocks the door to success? Well, there is more to it than what meets the eye.

Deciding the Objective

Let us talk about the first pillar. We take it for granted that deciding the objective is so straightforward. The moment I think or wish that I want a new car, a big house, a good degree from a reputed institution or answer to some unsolved riddle, my objective is fixed. Is it really so? This choice of objective itself may have seeds of failure ingrained in it. You may wonder how it can be. The more thoughtful is the choice of objective the better are the chances of your success.

When you decide upon an objective, you have to take into consideration your capacity, capability and temperament. If you do not do that, you have loaded your objective with seeds of failure.

Suppose I am frail and skinny, I see two people fighting on the street, tempers are running high. I am a good intentioned person, I decide to intervene physically by separating the two guys embroiled in that brawl without taking into consideration the fact that the two guys are muscular and I am just a bag of bones. What happens? By the time I recollect my senses I find some of my bones have given way and the fight is continuing anyway. My objective was to stop the fight by direct physical intervention and I have failed because I did not weigh my capacity while deciding my objective.

Let us now talk about capability. I want my house to be painted before Diwali and embark upon the task all by myself not withstanding the fact that in the past I have never even held a paint brush in my hand. Clearly I have decided my objective without reckoning my capability and failure shall be my reward.

Now a word about temperament, suppose I am hyperactive, I can’t sit still beyond a few minutes. My family is making arrangements for a function and all the family members are being assigned some task. I volunteer to help with the planning part, which involves sitting at one place for hours together with just a paper and a pen in the hand. Barely few minutes into my thinking chair, I feel uncomfortable and go to fetch water for myself. I keep running on such errands and plan nothing till the end of the day. Not factoring my temperament while deciding the objective in this case ruins the family function. So you see how choice of objective itself can contain seeds of failure. When we choose our objective without reckoning our capacity, capability and temperament we are making an impulsive choice. The trouble is that most of us do not have the wherewithal to resist impulses. If we can resist impulses, we can make a considered choice and increase the chances of our success.

You may ask if our capacity, capability and temperament are going to restrict the choice of our objective, where is the possibility of our dreaming big? Unless we dream big, how do we make it big in life? Patience is the name of the game. ‘Haste makes waste’ is an old adage but old adages are time tested. The good thing is that capacity, capability and temperament are not given constants - they are dynamic parameters. When you get hold of the key to success, you learn to augment your capacity, enhance your capability and mould your temperament. When you have the key to success your choice of objective is not impulsive, it is well considered. In this way your wings are not clipped, you can indeed dream big and achieve big because your dreams cease to be mere fantasies but have support of solid scaffoldings.

While talking of objectives it may be added that sometimes the objective may gel well with your capacity, capability and temperament and therefore, may carry the seeds of success in it, yet it may not be a desirable objective. Succeeding in achieving an undesirable objective takes a toll on your long term success worthiness. Why? Because every time you succeed in achieving. an undesirable objective your capacity and capability take a beating, your temperament gets molded in a way that gradually disqualifies you from getting support from the nature in achieving your objectives. In other words, you tend to become less lucky. Let us illustrate this with an example. You are well built, you have friends in the law enforcing agencies, and you are a little rash by temperament. Someone’s car accidentally grazes past your car taking a chip of paint with it. You decide to impart instant justice by landing a few heavy blows on the face of the hapless driver. With your kind of capacity, capability and temperament your objective carries seeds of success and chances are you will not only succeed but even get away with it. What happens after this success? Buoyed by success you become more rash, chances of your getting embroiled in similar situations increase and thus you gravitate in favor of such objectives with increasing frequency in future. With your type of connections you may think that you are getting away with your adventures but surreptitiously and surely things start working out in such a manner that gradually your capacities and capabilities start eroding. You may not see full manifestation of this erosion in a short span but slowly and steadily it makes you less and less lucky.

We talked about a thing called ‘getting control of the key to success’. The good thing is that as you start getting control, your ability to discriminate between desirable and not-desirable improves and as a result you seem to become luckier. Before we demystify this ‘control’, let us talk about the second pillar of success.

Choosing the Means

What constitutes ‘means’ to achieve an objective is a subjective choice. You may decide to go to Mumbai by air and travel to the airport by cab or decide to go by train and take a bus to reach the railway station. Means are just pathways to realization of objectives. For same destination there can be numerous pathways. If you are traveling by a car, you would prefer a wide road that is less bumpy and less congested even if it is a bit longer. If you are traveling on foot narrow, bumpy and congested pathway may still be preferred if it is shorter. You are faced with multiplicity of choices. You need to choose the means that work efficiently and are under your control. Wrong choice can spell failure. Failure awaits you if you choose a butter knife to cut a jackfruit.

As you get ‘control’ you are not only able to choose the right means but also use them efficiently. What do we mean by efficient use of means?

Abdul Kareem, a resident of Kerala had studied up to class four only. The sight of barren hills near his village made his heart ache. Determined to convert the rocky laterite surface into lush green forest, he bought a 5 acre barren land in the hilly terrain with a dry well. He had neither learning nor any external support. His staple means was his perseverance. He began to plant mature saplings of wild trees in spaces between laterite rocks. During summers, he would fetch water in cans from long distance on his motorcycle to water these saplings. He was fighting it out all alone, fellow villagers considered him crazy. None lent him a helping hand. After three years of struggle his efforts bore fruit and as a result of his saplings, which were now young adult trees, the water level in the area rose. He bought more land and started planting the whole area in frenzy. The nature lent a helping hand. Birds began to arrive and discharge all manner of seeds. Weeds grew and amidst them rare herbs and medicinal plants - none chosen by Kareem. Water levels in a 10km radius rose. The once barren hill was now a water sponge. This loner’s success story has been taken note of by UN environmentalists and his technique now has an official name - barren rock cultivation technique, it has been hailed as an ecological miracle. Abdul had meager means but he used them in most efficient manner.

How did Abdul learn efficient use of resources? The intensity of your yearning for achievement of a goal fortifies your ‘control’. As you get ‘control’, you are able to extract maximum out of minimal means that you may have. In a way, your ‘control’ compensates for the paucity of means. Without ‘control’ even plethora of means are no passport to success.

Just as in the case of objective, there is a catch in the case of means also. You may get success by adopting dubious means but that again erodes your ‘control’ and over a period brings down your success rate. On the other hand if you use means that are above board, the choice itself goes to fortify your ‘control’ and in the long run increases your success rate. As you get ‘control’, you tend to gravitate towards right means and make the most of them.

How Do We Get Lucky?

While talking of first pillar, we have said that if we are able to get that mysterious thing called ‘control’, we are able to choose an objective that not only matches our capacity, capability and temperament but is also a desirable objective. A desirable objective gets support from the nature. Our capacity, capability and temperament need not restrict the choice of our objective; the ‘control’, in due course, enables us to alter the three so as to match the objective.

While talking of the second pillar, we have said that this ‘control’ not only enables us to choose the right means but also use them efficiently.

We have not talked about the third pillar but we may just add that as you get this ‘control’, you tend to become luckier, or in other words, the hand of providence seems to take hold of your hand and lead you towards success. At this stage, this is just a statement, as you go further in this book; you will see how the ‘control’ takes hold of the luck factor also.

It is clear that while success as an event hinges on the three pillars, sustained success depends on the ‘control’ that we have been talking about. This control makes you success worthy. When you are success worthy, success does not come as a matter of chance or by fluke, it comes as a result of your own efforts. When you are success worthy, you do not aim for success per se, you just choose your objective, choose your means, use them efficiently and get support from nature and success comes as a by product.

Let us now embark upon that journey that is going to give us that mysterious, ‘control’ that is going to open the door of success for us.

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You - The Physical and The Non-physical

This journey for getting ‘control’ is like getting the ability to walk in the woods without getting bothered by the inconveniences that walking in the woods entails. While walking in the woods you come across pebbles and thorns. What do you do to protect yourself against them? You do not think of clearing the way of all the pebbles and thorns to make your passage comfortable. You take their presence as inevitable in the type of surroundings you are in. Instead, you protect your feet by wearing shoes. This is more practical alternative.

In your passage through life, difficulties, failures, setbacks, misfortunes, disappointments, and obstructions are like those pebbles and thorns of the woods. Can you imagine a life that steers clear of all these bumps? It should certainly be possible to wear shoes that make our journey through this life more comfortable. When you succeed in wearing those shoes, you succeed in getting the ‘control’ that we have been talking about. Getting ‘control’ may be taken as synonymous with wearing those shoes.

Where do you look for these shoes? There is an interesting tale that gives us a clue. There was a traveler who had just landed in his country after making a fortune in distant lands. The traveler had to spend a day at the port of landing before he could get an onward connection to his native place. A conman befriended this traveler and persuaded him to stay with him in a hotel overnight, before continuing their onward journey to their respective destinations. The traveler was in a habit of taking bath early in the morning inadvertently, he had told about this habit to the conman. As the traveler went for his bath, the trickster made a quick search of all his baggage, bedding and even the pillow in a hope to trace part of the fortune that the traveler might be carrying with him. The search yielded nothing valuable. Next forenoon, when the two were about to part, the conman candidly revealed his identity and the purpose of befriending the traveler, and asked as to where had he concealed his fortune. The traveler smilingly replied that as a matter of precaution, he had hid his money bag in the pillow of the conman. When the conman went to take his bath, the traveler retrieved his money bag.

Nature has played a similar trick with us. The shoes we are looking for—that can make our journey comfortable, our track enjoyable, full of fun, adventure, and thrill—are hidden in our own self. We keep searching for them in all sorts of obvious places except within ourself. It just does not occur to us to search our own pillow.

Do such shoes really exist? Has anyone ever tried them? Yes, such shoes have always existed. There have always been people in all times and all places who have tried them and achieved highest fulfillment in life that one can aspire for. What is more, the wise of yore assure that all of us, without exception, have those wonder shoes hidden in our pillow. All of us are qualified to search for them, retrieve them and benefit by wearing them.

So, we are all qualified to embark on that search, but where do we begin? We have to begin from where we are. We need to have a wholesome acceptance of our self. I may be physically weak, materially not well endowed, mentally not among the gifted, socially not among the well connected, and full of frailties, do I still qualify? Yes, the statement that declares us all as qualified candidates has eternal validity in time and universal applicability in space. The nature that has backed all the aspirants so far is still there and will let none down. All we need is a will to look around for our shoes.

Take a Look at Yourself

If you are trying to search for something in a region, it certainly helps to know that region as well as you can. We just said that nature has hidden those proverbial shoes within our own self. It will definitely help to know a bit about our own self. To begin our search for those shoes, we ought to take a closer look at our self. All the time we are being acted upon and are also acting or reacting. We are being acted upon by our physical environment, which consists of animate and inanimate entities. We are not just passive absorbers of all actions of our surroundings but are active players who are perpetually acting upon the surroundings. All this may happen knowingly or unknowingly, but it is happening all the time for sure.

Let us take a little help from biologists in trying to understand how environment acts on us and how we act upon the environment.

How do actions get perceived by us? We have five input centers in our body, or five sense instruments. Eyes gather visual impressions, ears gather sound impressions, nose gathers impressions of smell, tongue gathers impressions of taste, and skin gathers impressions of touch. Surroundings act upon us by bombarding us with these sense impressions. Our body also has five output centers or five action instruments. These action instruments carry the task of procreation, excretion, communication, grasping, and locomotion. We carry the task of action on our surroundings through these action instruments.

Impressions gathered by our five sense instruments travel down to our brain in the form of neural signals. For each sense instrument, an identified region in the brain processes the impressions. The regions of the brain that have direct interface with sense instruments are called primary sensory regions. Processed information from primary sensory regions is sent to secondary sensory regions. Here more abstract features of input from primary sensory regions are processed. From secondary sensory regions information goes to the tertiary sensory region. Intermixing of processed information from primary and secondary regions is carried out in the tertiary region. Here sensory input is translated into symbolic process, and concrete perception is translated into abstract thinking. It is here that memories are registered, pictures of external objects are conceived, speech is understood and formulated and planning is done.

Just like primary, secondary and tertiary sensory regions, we have primary, secondary and tertiary motor regions too. For an action to be executed, activity from the tertiary sensory region is sent to the tertiary region of the motor. From the tertiary region, output goes to the secondary region of motor and from there to the primary region of motor. It is from the primary region of motor that actual motor action of specific muscles is controlled. As signals travel down from the tertiary region of the motor to the primary - region of the motor, information starts becoming more specific. It may be noted that between sensory input and motor output a whole range of operations involving thought, language, memory, self-awareness, and even many aspects of mood are involved. What happens between initial sensory input and final motor output is called Intermediary Processing (IP).

This is how we are acted upon by the environment and we act upon the environment.

If we assume that IP is controlled by chemical activity of cells, the working of brain appears like that of a computer. The brain has well defined regions carrying out specific tasks and, thus, we appear like an automaton. If it were so, we should have a well-defined input-output mechanism, and thus our response to specific sensory stimuli should always be same. The smell of a particular sweet meat makes my tongue salivate, a strong urge to taste the sweet meat arises, I move towards the sweet meat, hold it, and put it in my mouth. By persistent effort, I can train myself to develop an indifferent attitude towards same sweet meat. Now its aroma does not make my tongue salivate; I do not feel a strong urge to go and grab the piece. Although sensory inputs are same, motor outputs have got modified, not because my cells have been modified by surgical intervention but because of my resolve. It may be said that the act of making the resolve modifies the cells. If it is so, we have to admit that final authority as to how the cells will function vests not with the cells but with some higher command center.

I am sipping tea; my