If you possess the wisher mentality toward success, the following facts will assist you in making meaningful changes that will positively improve your perspective regarding success and how to achieve it.
“Making a success of something has nothing to do with luck. Care, thought, and study go into making something succeed; luck is what you get playing the lottery, roulette, or gambling.” (West Robert)
Success is a conscious achievement; you can’t just sleep and wake up successful or accidentally jump into success and then figure it out afterward. No one luckily becomes a professor, a doctor, a musician, or an author. Success is the product of purposeful thinking and hard work. Until you set a strong and clear demarcation between luck and success, you might be chasing a mirage or a shadow. Hoping to succeed with luck is like searching for fire beneath water. Success is the achievement of a set goal or something you have aimed at; luck, on the other hand, is accidentally getting what you never planned for or aimed at.
Ask people who have succeeded to find out if they accidentally succeeded; as a matter of fact, truly successful people expect to succeed before they succeed. A pianist, after playing magnificently, confessed to his applauding audience, saying, “If you know how hard I have worked to achieve this, it wouldn’t look special at all.” Eddie Cantor, an American comedian, once said that it took him twenty years to succeed once. Successful people are like a swimming goose; they appear calm on the surface but are paddling rigorously underneath to stay afloat. A renowned world boxing champion said, “Champions are made from something they have deep inside them.” Don’t be carried away by the flashy appearance of champions; try to know their struggles—it is the most profitable thing to learn from every top achiever.
Success is not an overnight event; it is a combination of several right choices and decisions and the reward of previous effort. Success is therefore not a target to be pursued; it is the result you get when you have pursued and achieved a target. I was at a life coaching program, and the guest speaker requested five people to answer a simple question: “Who do you see yourself becoming this year?” One of the volunteers responded by saying, “I see myself as a rich man.” “I see myself as a rich man” is a mere statement of wish. I do not wish to criticize this volunteer, but it is a fact that one cannot just become a “rich man”; you have to do something and succeed in that before you become a “rich man.”
I have never seen a rich man who has pursued becoming a “rich man” as his career or target in life, but I have seen doctors, lawyers, teachers, politicians, entrepreneurs, farmers, fashion designers, builders, nurses, shoemakers, computer programmers, etc., who have devoted time and effort toward perfecting their skills and actualizing their dreams, and people call them “rich men”—and that is, if by calling them “rich men” they mean to call them successful men and women. If your desire is only to become rich, you might never achieve your desire; instead, think of what you will do.
Luck in the Quest for Success Is When Preparation Meets Opportunity
A man named Steven Spielberg dreamt of making a certain film. In his effort to actualize his dream, he wrote the script. He had no producer but needed someone to finance it. While he was still looking for a producer, one day he was walking on the beach when he met a man who was willing to invest in young filmmakers. Spielberg was able to shoot his first film titled Amblin in 1968 with the money he received from that man, and the film he shot was honorably recognized at the Venice Film Festival, which made him known and popular in Hollywood. Today, Spielberg is a well-known and respected movie director in Hollywood. He has won several awards, including the American Film Institute Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995. Think of what would have happened if Spielberg had not written the script when he met that producer; trust me, you will only succeed by luck if you have worked hard enough to take advantage of available opportunities. Abraham Lincoln said, “I will prepare, and one day my chance will come.”
Success recedes from those who wish to acquire it effortlessly; success comes only as a by-product, a reaction, or a bonus for something you have invested yourself in.
Dennis Kimbro and Napoleon Hill said, “Success is not a product of fate, chance, or luck; it is the result of a burning desire that knows no defeat.” You will never succeed if you sit and do nothing. Success is a reaction, and for any reaction to occur, there must be an action. It looks great and attractive to see a champion receiving a medal after a contest, but the truth is that they did not become champions in the ring—they are only recognized in the ring. Certainly, the success of tomorrow is the reaction of today’s action; if you want your future to be bright, you have to start working toward it now. Alan Kay said, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it now.” Felix G. Rohatyn said, “The choice is between doing something and doing nothing, and doing nothing never gets you anywhere.” Success and hard work are two different things but are joined together by the same thread. He who seeks either is bound to find the other.
Until your ‘WISH’ graduates to ‘WILL’, you will never be successful.
‘Wish’ is weaker than ‘Will.’ It is not strong enough to overcome excuses. ‘Will’ is eager to act and strong enough to overcome excuses and face challenges. Everybody wishes to succeed, but only those who are willing to succeed will succeed. It is quite obvious that a sleeping cat will never catch a rat. Similarly, an idle man will never succeed. In place of wishing things were different, begin to make things different and mould your life to the shape you like. Note that ‘Wish’ alone keeps you idle, but ‘Will’ gets you busy—and it is better to be busy even for nothing than to be idle. Washington Irving said, “Great minds have purpose; little minds have wishes.”
