Success mantra - just do it

28 February 2015

I want you to take out some time and look back upon your life. As a child, what was your biggest dream in life? What did you want to become in life? Who were your role models when you were younger? What is your biggest accomplishment so far?

I am sure, we all need to do a lot more than what we are doing right now, if we have to reach any way near our childhood dreams. Some of you will be wondering “Oh God, when was the last time, I gave it a thought?”

Why is it that most of us have dumped our dreams and got ourselves busy in “9” to “6” office jobs five days a week? Where is the fire, where is the passion, where is the energy which was there when we were small kids? What has gone wrong in us over the years as we grew older? Actually the fact of the matter is “We have stopped dreaming now.”

There has to be a reason for our changed behaviour. And today, we have to identify the reason and accordingly change our mind set.

In order to bring our dreams into reality, we need to plan things and then take action. If it was that simple, then where is the problem?

Fear of failure stops us from taking action. As we grow older, the ghost of failures of our past starts controlling our mind set. We fear we will fail because we are not good enough. We feel that if we fail, others will make fun of us. So it is better not to take risks in life. The result is we start playing safe in life. Passion and aggression gives way to conservatism and complacency. We tone down expectations from ourselves. Some of us get so busy analysing and imagining all those things that can go wrong if we execute our plans that ultimately we abandon the plan. And the result is we start losing Self Confidence.

Leo Tolstoy rightly said “Let fear once get possession of your soul, and it does not readily yield its place to another sentiment”

But if we want to live a fulfilling life, we have to keep dreaming big throughout life. We have to come out of our comfort zone and challenge ourselves. We have to overcome this fear of failure and of not being good enough. The best way to conquer fear is to face it head on.

Future will always be uncertain. That is why it is future. But we should have the courage to execute our plans amidst the uncertainty.

As Arthur Koestler said “Courage is never to let your actions be influenced by your fears”.

You will be surprised to know that once you start executing your plans i.e. turning plans into action, the road ahead starts getting clearer. If you have not noticed it till now then please do it now onwards. Once you start executing your thoughts, all the positive energies of the world get behind you helping you out. Slowly all the unsolved puzzles which were bothering you at the stage of planning start getting solved. The reason for the same is simple. Now your mind is in positive state ready to execute your thoughts. Fear is a thing of past now. Fear will bother you only till the time you were not ready to face the situation. The moment you face the situation, fear disappears.

So let’s go back to our childhood days. I will tell you how my nine months old son learnt how to open a door. You will be amazed to see how a small baby starts learning lessons of life on his own. One day i saw my son trying to open the door. Obviously he would have watched us opening door over time and now he wanted to give it a try. To my surprise, instead of pulling the door, he actually was pushing the door. Obviously the door instead of getting opened was getting closed. He tried few times and then got busy in some other mischief. He tried to open the door by pushing the door for next few days, he didn’t succeed. All this while, I was wondering, how will this small baby learn to pull the door to open it? Then one day, I saw him holding the door by the side and again pushing it to open it. He got his fingers hurt in the process. This routine continued for next few days. Then one fine day, he learnt to pull the door towards himself. I was so happy for him. But his problem had still not solved. While pulling the door, he didn’t know that he has to get aside. Hence he would come in the way of door and get his feet hurt in the process. Also the door will not open. Again this same activity repeated for next few days. Finally, a day came when he learnt not to come in the way of door while pulling the door and ultimately he was able to open the door. He was so happy that day.

And in this whole process, he taught me an important lesson of life. In order to achieve your dreams, the first step is to “Just do it”. You may succeed or you may fail. But just do it. If you succeed, it’s fine. If you fail, it hardly matters. You just need to keep innovating and then keep trying until you succeed. When you are failing, then you need to look back at your mistakes also. You can’t keep repeating same old steps and hope for success. You need to look up to people who have already achieved success. And you will find your way out to achieve your goals.

“When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps” – Confucious

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