Archive for October 24th, 2007
Desire, Decision and Discipline
An ever elusive question in life is,” what is success?” It has different forms and is interpreted in different terms by different people. A general opinion would rate position, power, money and respect as a few parameters to judge success on. Besides this, there is an even more intriguing question – what is the formula for success, if at all there is? Beyond doubt, there is no definite answer to this.
Nevertheless, there are certain traits which characterize a successful person. Many researchers have tried over the years to pin down on a few qualities that ensure ‘success’. Alas, none of them can claim to be comprehensive, neither will I. With this caveat, I would introduce three factors/traits which I think are paramount to success. My understanding and observations are indeed coloured by my own experiences in the world and my understanding of them.
These are the three cornerstones of success. Other skills of planning, execution and monitoring are necessary of course, but without the above 3 in the same order starting with desire, no one can achieve much.One should have a burning desire to do something; he/she should be able to picturise the same in a crystal clear fashion. The desire should be backed by conviction and courage to take the necessary decisions to drive action on the ground. The decisions and actions should be harnessed by discipline to hold course!
This forms the crux of hitting gold. Of course, the ability to take the right decision is of utmost importance here and the trained mind is more often in a position to take a better decision. However, the three key traits of desire, decision and discipline still form the backbone of the success framework. I call these as the key factors since we can analyze any aspect of our lives by fitting these to it, to understand why someone managed to excel at it while others could not. For that matter, we could look at different undertakings in our own lives, why were we successful in a particular endeavour and yet unsuccessful in others.
“Did I have the desire in the first place? Was the final goal clear to me? Did I want it badly enough? Did I decide to act when it was needed? Did I have the conviction and courage to go ahead? Did I do what had to be done? Did I complete the tasks on time without compromising on quality? Did I compromise on a planned activity? If the answer for any one of the above questions except the last one is a no, we would have definitely squandered away a chance to achieve success.”
