I recently came through a linkedin post where in the writer was addressing the fact that he is happy with the life he lives in the 9-5 vertical. He is more than happy to earn what he is earning right now and he tries to fulfill all the wishes of his family and enjoys occasional luxuries. Most of the times satisfaction is a far better thing than being successful can ever be. Success is the end result but the longest duration you live is of the period where you sow the seeds and work on growing them into a fruitful trees. However, it may not be necessary that the fruits of your toil will benefit only you. It will spread and reach out to an entire generation.
Why do we hear this word so much? We see someone who is doing really well in his business and feel that he is successful. The word itself is highly relative and can have different meaning for every other person. Some may call running 2 kms daily a success while some may call success as reaching office on time and getting that big promotion on hand. Each aspect of work and our life is revolving around that one moment of happiness for which we are working hard enough and spending sleepless nights. There are hundreds of examples when people have beaten the odds and soared newer heights creating milestones for themselves and other people who wish to walk on the same path. If we are not conscious during this journey we may miss some important events in our life which may never get repeated. We are born and we go to school. There we wish to be an adult and do all kinds of adult stuff, going to a job, earning money, spending it on things we like and so on. The same chapter repeats when we gain adulthood and wish to be a child again. This has been a universal phenomenon and has been talked about from a very long time. It may sound too critical to think about only the negative side of something but in our own heart we know that it is the truth and it is a basic human nature to always crave for something more. Also, we begin to take things for granted too quickly. The love of your life may feel too possessive if you go out to another city and want to spend time finding yourself.
If we talk about a successful and an unsuccessful person we are making a differentiation on the basis of material aspects. A person who may have been working on the same salary for almost 30 years and increasing it just by the rate of inflation cannot be termed as being a failure.
If the article seems to be going too negative just hold on for a bit. What if we look into another aspect and shift our perspective a little bit. This may seem to be a hardest thing to do as you are not being convinced by anyone else rather you are convincing yourself to believe into something. The perspective which I feel can change the mindset of the human population can be to focus our activities on a single thing…”Happiness”. The usual jargon that has been fed to us is that we have to work hard and earn a lot of amount in our bank accounts till our retirement so that we can spend some of our years in prosperity. I cannot imagine that the higher power must have thought something like this about such a unique and beautiful creation. In the large universe, there is known form of life only on the planet we share and we think about it we all are connected in some or the other way. If we just think about why every great philosopher or preacher or any learned person talks about the interconnectedness of the entire universe is that this is one thing which is omnipresent, as a person sitting in front of us can change our mood if he just gives a smile for no reason. We greet and meet people, have friends, be with our family, love our pets, fight with someone over an issue and it all affects how we think and how we react to any situation.
When we think about how can thinking about happiness and interconnectivity between humans can figure out if success is over rated or not is that it includes the how and why of the success. The people around us let us know the how of success and how we are going to achieve it. The Happiness part comes in when we look into the why aspect of success. In simpler words we are able to achieve something as a combined effort of us and the people around us and the reason why we pursue something is to feel happy about it. Achieving anything is a success in some way. If we feel accomplished and get to know that our efforts our paid off then we feel good. However, sometimes there may be some situation where the end result is not as per the expectation and we call it a failure but if we look at the whole process it can be seen that we are an entirely different person and we have handled a situation which was not expected by us and we are still able to make changes in something. If we would have concentrated on the end result then we would have lost the pleasure of our efforts. For example, if a business has a revenue target of 7000 Cr. It does not mean that it will be successful only when it achieves that figure. However, if it is able to make a sale, that will be the first moment of success and happiness for the people involved in the company. it will grow subsequently, break even will be achieved and after the initial incubation period it will keep going towards the initial goal. It may reach there one day or it may not but the efforts and the stories behind it will always stay in the mind of the persons who are being involved in these activities.
So is it bad or is it good?
I say it all depends on what gives a person true happiness. There may be some people who believe that if a person is made to act on his free will he may destroy the peace and happiness of other person. But it is quite evident that if a person does something bad, the first feeling that comes to that persons mind is that of guilt. We often believe in the laws of karma till the time we do not do anything wrong. if we however do something wrong, then we wish that it is all a fantasy and we never have to face anything due to it. This is a misconception and the laws of nature are as strong as the universe. The crux is that we have to be thoughtful about our feelings at the moment of doing something and that consciousness will allow us to shift our perspective towards happiness and give an entirely new meaning and purpose to your life.
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