Success is an art which can be learnt by understanding some fundamental rules and can be developed into habit with sincere and regular practice of those rules. In fact, golden rules of success are the same for any walk of life. Only they need to be customized according to specific needs of a goal. Further, success is not one time achievement but a continuous process for higher and higher goals. It is a never ending journey, which gives meaning and purpose to life. There are two fold principles of The Art of Success:
1. True knowledge and understanding of the traits of success.
2. Internalisation of these traits so as to make them an integral part of your nature and personality.
Whereas, it is easy to know and discuss about the traits of success, it is a real challenge to integrate them in your personality.
Success traits include qualities like positive thinking, belief in self, courage, dedication towards goal, skilled time management, energy management etc. These are well known to every conscious human being. Everyone desires to maintain these qualities. But when it comes to reality, it becomes difficult to practice them. This is because there is vast difference between desire and will.
The list of factors of success can be quite long if they are placed in different heads and sub heads. However, in order to simplify them Success Guru AK Mishra prefers to place them under four spokes of the wheel of success. These are Mind, Time, Energy and Human Relationship. Sharpening the skill of managing these four priceless gifts of God to human beings can take you to any height of life.
Success begins with recognition of your true self. Everyone is a unique creation of God with immense potentiality to grow and achieve success, peace and happiness in life. An understanding and realization of your true potentiality and uniqueness is a wonderful experience. Max Lucado says, “You weren’t an accident. You weren’t mass produced. You aren’t an assembly line product. You were deliberately planned, specifically gifted and lovingly positioned on the earth by the master Craftsman.”
Everyone of us has a purpose of coming in this world and everyone has some uniqueness in him to achieve his goal.
Master your mind,
Achieve the success
By Success Guru AK Mishra
Human brain is limitless in terms of its capacity for memory and thinking. No computer of the world can match a healthy brain. Even the great scientist Einstein would not claim utilization of more than 15% of the capacity of his brain. It comprises about 100 billion cells called as neurons and has capacity to store about 300 trillion words. Thus there is nothing for any healthy human being to complain regarding lack of memory power. Problem is not in the capacity of brain but in not knowing how to utilize our unlimited brain power. There is nothing beyond our mind in this world. In fact, this world has a meaning for us all because of our mind only.
Whatever we get or lose is all because of our mind. Right from our childhood, we are trained how to eat, dress up, live, talk, work, enjoy but not how to use our brain and run our mind which runs everything for us. Let us imagine, what will be the meaning of anything in our possession or around us in this world without our brain. Of course, nothing exists for us beyond our mind. Thus, all our achievements are directly related to the skill of running our mind.
The art of success is, in fact, an art of running our mind efficiently. Here, it is important to understand that there is vast difference between literacy and education. A person can be thoroughly educated without being literate. Akbar, the Great, is one of the best examples of this. Many of the saints and religious gurus were illiterate but were highly knowledgeable. On the other hand, in our country or anywhere in the world, there is a very large number of literates and highly qualified people but those who can claim to be really educated to live life purposefully and give meaning to this world are always in very small percentage. A true education has a direct relation with realization within self. Academic education can make us literate and enrich us with information and knowledge but their utilization and meaningfulness depend on our power of true education which, in other words, is self realization on anything. Galileo says, “You can not teach a person anything. You can only help him find it within himself.” God has already powered up our brain, we just have to discover how to use it for maximum gain. A true teacher is one who does not spoil the originality of his student’s brain but helps him in realizing within himself.
I strongly believe in the Philosophy of Buddha in this regard. He says, “Believe nothing. No matter where you read it, or who said it, even I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.”
Therefore, my art of success is aimed at reminding you of the qualities which are already lying deep inside your mind. You have just to realize them and set them in motion for your greater achievements.
Here, it is pertinent to understand that we cannot recognise, understand and interpret a thing in right perspective if it or related to it, information is in our memory. In other words, there is a need of right kind of human software for getting a desired result from our mind. As a computer can not give a result for the thing for which it has no software, so happens with our brain. In order to succeed in any walk of life, you need to have the right kind of software. In the case of Civil Services Examination, you need to have human software of administrative traits in your personality. You may be having most of them, but you need to fine tune them according to the requirement of your role expected in Civil Services.
Till now, your human software is academic and all that has come to your personality unregulated and uncontrolled as programming right from your childhood from your parents, family, school, college and other educational institutions, friends, relatives, teachers, media, kind of readings done etc.
You may or may not have the right kind of human software to reveal your traits through the Civil Services Exam, which can prove you a right choice for such a higher level administrative post as in Civil Services. Therefore, you need to look inside yourself and reprogramme your brain with the traits of personality which are needed for administration. If you do so, you will do smart work (intelligent hard work). You will read like an administrator and think and interpret anything like an administrator. We do not get what we want, but what we are. Therefore, be first in your inner world what you want to be in the outer world as our outer world is just the reflection of our inner world.
In order to develop right kind of human software you need to reorient, practice and internalize some of the following aspects of your personality:
1. Right goal
2. Right inspiration
3. Right paradigm
4. Right belief
5. Right attitude
6. Right state of mind
7. Right thinking
8. Right action
Right goal
You need to be very clear and specific about your goal. This is not just planning superficially about a career and jumping into the race for it. Most of the civil services aspirants come in the grade of being superficial about their goal. If you want a positive outcome from your goal setting you need to be specific as to with what rank, for which service and in which particular year you want to qualify. You should write this goal in bold letters at the start of your note book or anywhere convenient for your frequent reading. You should read this goal note at least twice – once in morning before you start your studies and next time at night before you sleep. Every time you read your goal statement you must do it religiously with a peace of mind and run it through your mind and internalize it in your subconscious mind through repetitive thinking about the social recognition and opportunities of realization of your potential attached with it. After you have decided your goal follow it as the travelers can follow North Pole star to be sure about their direction.
You should stop settling for anything less than what you want because it does not take any more energy to create a big dream than it does to create a little one. The real thrill comes with the task, which is considered difficult. If you want to be happy set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy and inspires your hopes. Michelangelo says, “The greater danger of most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but it is too low and we reach it.”
You should guard yourself against your dream stealers. They may come as your friends and well wishers also and discourage you against your goal by projecting it as impossible and they may also divert you towards something they consider good for your safe future. Let us remember that everyone speaks his experience and his mind.
You should share your definite goal with the people with whom you are emotionally attached. Their good thoughts and prayers will give you spiritual strength for your goal. You should not hesitate in sharing this with a few of your rivals and those who hold poor opinion about you because their challenges will also keep fuelling the flame of your dream goal.
Brain is a goal seeking organism. Once we have made our goal definite it will work day and night to achieve it. In such situation the word impossible disappears and we start enjoying our every move towards our goal.
Napolean Hill says, “Whatever your mind can conceive, it can achieve.”
Right Inspiration
We cannot do a work for long for which we are not inspired. Once we set a goal properly we have to recognise the higher purpose for which we aim for the goal and should run in our mind regularly the glories and satisfaction attached with that. This practice will help us remain inspired towards our chosen goal.
Inspiration is a simple recognition of spirit within ourselves. It is return to that invisible fumeless field from which all things emanate, a field of energy. Patanjali says, “When we are inspired..... dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than your ever dreamt yourself to be.” In fact, when we are inspired for a task we get connected to ultimate source of energy for the fulfilment of that. Our belief and confidence take charge of our every movement towards our goal. On the other hand when we are not inspired the task becomes boring and a burden on us. Our energy level goes down and we are drawn towards failure.
Inspiration is a calling to proceed even though we’re unsure of goals or achievement, it may even insist that we go in the direction of uncharted territory. In fact, being in spirit is a direction we take, rather than a destination to be reached.
When we are inspired all our thoughts break their bonds; our mind transcends limitations; our consciousness expands in every direction; we find ourselves in a new, great and wonderful world, dormant forces and talents become alive and we discover ourselves to be a greater person by far than we ever dreamt ourselves to be. We experience a driving force within us and we move upwardly and godwardly.
Right Paradigm
The art of running our mind begins with understanding of Paradigm. This term can be defined as our perception, understanding and interpretation of anything. It is a kind of reference map in our mind through which we perceive, understand and interpret anything in our world. This is developed from our education, socialization and culturisation. We need to review, examine and revise our paradigm with all open mind to grow in our life. Quite often our paradigm is governed by old facts and truths. They need to be updated. For example, there was a time when it was believed that sun moves around earth. That time human paradigm and all explanations related to cosmic phenomena were guided by this concept of sun and other cosmic bodies moving around earth. Later discoveries drastically changed the paradigm. Most of the geographical and scientific discoveries are examples of paradigm shifts. In relation to your efforts towards your goal in life, you always need to review your paradigm. When you do so, with an open mind, you get astonishing results. You will discover that something is impossible till now because of wrong paradigm. Here you need to shift your paradigm based on latest relevant facts and thought.
While going into the truth as to how and why is Civil Services Exam tough, you may discover that your existing paradigm is based on facts from your listening and reading which otherwise are different in reality when examined and analysed properly. The factors like ‘vacancies are around 700 and applicants are around 3,00,000’, ‘attempts are limited’, ‘age limit is just between 21 and 30’, and that ‘syllabus is tough’ are disturbing for you till the time you go out of the prevailing notion and examine the facts yourself. While moving in right paradigm you find that while applicants are about 3 lac every year, those who turn up to the examination hall are not more than 50%. Further, not all those who appear in the examination are serious about this examination. Those who take it seriously and prepare also seriously under right guidance and with proper reading material, are around 10,000 every year. If you are a serious candidate your actual competition is among 10,000 in the Preliminary examination. The same way, the real competition in the main examination is among about 4000 and in interview among about 1200 candidates only. Similarly, analysis of facts of examination related to age limit, attempt limits and syllabus can make you free from unwanted worries and you can be more effective towards your goal. Consequently, your paradigm related to this exam being very tough and impossible will change and you will be motivated to go for it.
Right belief
Belief is golden thread that runs through all the teachings and makes them work for those who sincerely accept and apply them. This is a truth related to our any goal. One of the foremost conditions to be successful in life is to have belief in ourself and in the achievement we target for. As our brain is a goal seeking organism, it has power to make our both negative or positive belief a reality. In fact, through a lifetime’s worth of events, our brain actually learns what to expect next whether it eventually happens that way or not. And because our brain expects something will happen a certain way, we often achieve exactly what we anticipate. Therefore, it is important to hold positive expectations in our mind. In fact, world belongs to believers and only believers are true achievers.
Tim, a kickboxing champion says, “Most people fail not because they lack the skill or aptitude to reach their goal but because they simply don’t believe they can reach it.”
Right Attitude
Attitude is altitude of our life. We can reach only that level of our life, for which we have a right attitude. All of our success and defeat are guided by our attitude. Those of us who are success oriented will have tendency to take full responsibility of their life on themselves. They will not believe in excuses.
Our choices make our life. What we are till now, are the results of the choices we have made in the past and what we will be tomorrow depend on what choices we are making today. We should give up blaming habits and should take 100% responsibility on us for what happens to us. We need to stop complaining habit as it takes us to problem side. We have to be always solution oriented. If we cannot work for solution then we are problems in ourselves. There is no problem for which there is no solution. In fact a problem is problem till the time it has a solution, or else it is a natural disaster.
We can complain against anything only when it has a solution. We should not keep our emergency brake on when we are pursuing for our goal. We can get results only when we take efforts without consideration and constraints. A habit of driving towards a goal with emergency brake on is an invitation for accident and disappointments.
Every achievement is beyond our comfort zone. We have to break away from existing comfort for a higher achievement in life. Furthermore we have to maintain an attitude of not worrying but working. Worry oriented attitude takes us down. This should be converted to thinking attitude which has a power to create us for our chosen goal.
Right State of Mind
The next important factor in mind management is the art of maintaining right state of mind. It is the state of mind that makes good or ill, that makes wretch or happy, rich or poor. Our attitude, behaviour, act, level of confidence, belief, all are governed by the state of our mind. Our state of mind is generated by neuro-physiological state which means internal communication and physiological condition together. The person with whom we talk most is ourself. What positive or negative we talk to ourself on any matter combined with what is our physiological status will create our state of mind and will reflect in our attitude, behaviour and action. In enabling state of mind, we have confidence, love, inner strength, joy, ecstasy, belief and in paralyzing state of mind, we are dominated by confusion, depression, fear, anxiety, sadness and frustration. Our state of mind influences our thinking on an issue which further affects and is affected by our memory. Further, as is our memory, so is our attitude and as is our attitude so is altitude of our life. Thus, for an enabling state of mind, we should learn how to maintain our healthy neuro-physiological state. We have to be director of our own mind, so as to keep it in enabling state as much as we can. Only then, desired result can be secured.
Success is development of power to get whatever one wants in life without interfering with the rights of others. In the age of tough competition success can come through use of such power only. Power is organized energy or effort. It’s an ability to organize knowledge and the faculties of mind. We call it HUMAN SOFTWARE. Human mind can be compared with a computer, which cannot run a programme without software. The thinking process and the life experiences are what make our memory, which works like a human software.
Right Thinking
Success is development of power to get whatever one wants in life without interfering with the rights of others. In an age of tough competitions success can come through the use of such power only. Power is an organized energy or effort. It’s an ability to organize knowledge and the faculties of mind. We call it HUMAN SOFTWARE. Human mind can be compared with a computer, which cannot run a programme without software. The thinking process and the life experiences are what make our memory, which works like a human software.
Our experiences are not what happened to us but what we did with what happened to us. In other words our experiences are our responses to stimuli created by events of our life. Our responses to forthcoming events are based on past experiences in similar situations. Our thinking pattern plays the most crucial role in creating our memory and influencing our attitude. In fact, thinking creates memory and memory creates attitude which ultimately decides success or altitude of life. In fact, thinking is the process of creating human memory. All that we are is the result of what have been thought so far. Every word we think is creating our life. Our very life is our thinking and the result of our thinking process. The secret of success lies not without but within the thoughts of man. Thoughts make weak men strong and strong men weak. Whatever all we do eating, wearing clothes, driving, playing, are preceded by thoughts. The very way we walk, the way we carry ourselves, our talk, our manner of dress, all reflect our way of thinking. What we exhibit outwardly, we are inwardly. We are the product of our own thought. Whatever we believe ourselves to be, we are.
Thoughts are the original source of all wealth, all successes, all material gains, all great discoveries and inventions and of all achievements. Our thoughts, those predominate, determine our character, our career, indeed our everyday life.
Thoughts are the guiding force behind all the actions. And our actions inadvertently lead us to success or failure. It is rightly said, “Thoughts make or break a man.” Holy Bible says the same, “For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” It is also believed by great religious leaders that the universe is created by thought of universal mind. This universal mind is the super highway of information linking all the human minds together. That is why we react to thoughts of each other even when not physically in touch. They call it intuition or sixth sense. We are moulded greatly by others through newspapers, movies, radio and least thought about casual encounters. We are constantly bombarded by varying degree of thoughts all the time. And some of them may tune with our inner voice and can lead to greater visions. You all might have heard a popular advertisement saying, “an IDEA can change your life.” The perception of some great scientists changed the course of humanity by chanalizing common events into some great theories. The falling of an apple could be an easy availability of food but a powered brain of Newton took it as doors opening to great theories in Physics.
Mind is the source of all power and success is the product of creative thinking and firm belief in our ability to execute the ideas. Like attracts like is true when it comes to mental interactions. And we start getting help from our surroundings. Our mind sends silent signals that have magnetic influence. Positive frame of mind only invites desired results as thought creates after its kind and attracts upon which it is directed. For the thing which we greatly fear, that comes upon us. Our fear thoughts are just as creative and as magnetic in attracting troubles to us as are the constructive and positive thoughts in attracting positive results. Hence our thoughts should be directed on success and not on failure.
Visualization of positive outcome of our efforts gives a great power to our mind to succeed. This is a technique to deliberately foresee our success time and again in a relaxed state of mind. It activates creative power of subconscious mind and also focuses our mind towards our goal by programming its Reticular Activating System [RAS]. RAS is like RADAR for us which can send positive signals to others and can receive positive powers from others. In other words it magnetizes and attracts to us the people, resources and opportunities we need to achieve our goal. These people and resources might have existed earlier also but as our RAS was not activated we could not recognize them. If we keep visualizing happiness at destination point we will get strength and inspiration to face all odds of journey, rather we will enjoy our entire journey. Einstein says, “Imagination is everything. It is the purview of life’s coming attraction.” All discoveries and inventions have been preceded by imagination. The famous martial art champion and Hollywood film star, Bruce Lee, while struggling to establish himself as an actor in Hollywood, once wrote a letter to himself predicting that he would become superstar in coming ten years. He took this statement written by himself as a message from heaven, read it time and again everyday and kept visualizing the glories and happiness attached with him as a superstar. This practice activated his RAS and being fully inspired he gave his best in acting to become a superstar in just two years with the release of his famous film ‘Enter the dragon’. Today in Olympics almost in every game players are advised and also trained to use this visualization technique. Visualization, in fact, keeps us focused towards our main goal and also keeps us fully inspired and confident to pursue it.
Visualization has a power to transform our desire into will. And, desire is to obtain while will is a power to achieve. Therefore, we should navigate our mind with right thinking and through visualization technique we should reprogram our subconscious mind to power it up for spontaneous move towards our goal.
Right Action
Difference between possibility and impossibility is that of one’s attitude of belief or disbelief. The story of success begins with a courage to see higher dreams. One should see a dream higher than what he normally thinks is possible. It does not take any more energy to create a big dream than it does to create a little one. Robert Fitz says, “If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise.”
After having a right goal with right belief there is a need of right action to convert dream into a reality. Of course, there is no substitute to hard work but what really pays is smart work. In the final analysis a smart worker is an intelligent hard worker. The first and foremost condition of smart work is that you should be able to simplify your task and should be able to make it interesting too. One cannot do a work for long and cannot be creative in that till the time he enjoys it.
The world belongs to dreamers and believers. All the discoveries and inventions are achievements of lofty dreamers and firm believers. But these dreams and believes could not become realities till the time they were supported by right actions. It is said, thought without action is abortion. Therefore there is a need of right action in right time for converting any dream into reality. Right action includes a relevant approach, systematic planning and timely implementation. The first condition of right action is ability to be organized because you can get the best results from your mind only when you are organized. When you are organized, power of your mind develops manifold, your mind becomes magnetic.
Being relevant with approach towards your chosen task is like being on right path to your destination. All efforts become useless when you are irrelevant with your approach. In fact it is disastrous to work hard with irrelevant approach because more you would try farther you will be from your destination. Being irrelevant is like moving from Delhi in north direction towards Chandigarh while willing to go to Jaipur which is in south direction to Delhi. Faster you move in wrong direction farther you will be from your goal. Therefore its advisable to invest sufficient time in understanding the actual requirements of goal and developing right kind of software to get desired results from yourself.
Being relevant in approach is a real challenge. This is like being in right track when we move for a destination. It’s an old saying that well begun is half done. Quite often when you are preparing for competitive exams like that for civil services, you tend to work hard without relevant approach. Here you need to know that civil services examination is different from the university exam. It’s not in search of an academic scholar but an administrator. In order to be successful in this exam you need to think and act like an administrator. Therefore it’s obligatory that you should develop administrative traits in your personality before and during your preparation for civil services.
The next step of right action is systematic planning. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. A result oriented planning needs a thorough understanding of the task taken, the amount of resources available and meticulous allotment of time and energy. If you are asked how to eat elephant, definitely you cannot say that one should open his/her mouth and try to bite the elephant from anywhere he/she can and finish in one go. A correct approach should be to first cut it into small pieces and then eat them one by one with proper allotment of time.
Thus if your task related to your goal looks huge and tough like an elephant, you need to cut and classify your entire task into small assignments for yourself and then these assignments should be allotted with time and energy. It’s important to remember that the planning should be practical which can be genuinely followed. Developing a right planning is a method of being organized with your efforts. By this method the whole task and journey to success will be simplified and will also be made interesting. You will be inspired to move step by step towards your goal.
Implementation is the third and final step of right action. Without it all the things will remain in air. Whatever has been intelligently planned should be sincerely implemented. One of the most crucial aspects of implementation is efficient time management. It requires a very pragmatic allotment of time to different things, prioritization of tasks and timely completion of the tasks. Those who are success oriented have minimum possible gaps between their planning and implementation, whereas failure oriented people always keep complaining against shortage of time. They always find a lot of works pending and remain also in stress because of this. They also tend to procrastinate their works. You should set a target with framework of time and try to meet it. This will boost your confidence and prepare you for higher tasks. In order to get time bound result from yourself you have to give training of speed to your mind. As in 100 meter race a racer practices time and again to meet the target of time similarly in your studies you can cover more things in less time by giving repeated time bound practice to your mind. You can power up your mind for a speedy and quality coverage of your planned assignments. Habit of giving relaxed time framework makes your mind slow and lethargic.
Right action in fact is a smart way of doing anything. To sum up, not hard workers but smart workers get desired results. |
