“Success is not a function of the size of your title but the richness of your contribution.” 

-Robin Sharma

Achieving success is like a journey through a national park with overflowing rivers, deep craters, volcanoes, active and dormant, wild animals, and fluttering butterflies. You carve your path, experiencing the places you love, skipping the ones you don’t. You may be lost frequently, but remember that just means you are still on the journey. A person who is settled will never lose his way. And only when you are lost will you explore paths that may take you to newer experiences that may completely redefine success for you.

Success has many interpretations. It is like the feeling when you read The Bhagwad Geeta. Every person interprets it in his way. How you interpret is, will be how you live with it. 

1. His gloves may not necessarily fit your hands.

Success is one of the most misused words of our generation. Contrary to popular belief, it is not relative. It is individual. Success could be being a millionaire to one while recovering from a long-standing illness to another. Create your yardstick, and do not let anyone tell you otherwise. Define your success in your terms.

2. A strong belief can sell even a blank canvas as abstract art.

If you do not believe in your dreams, how do you expect someone else to invest in you? If you express yourself as average, how do you expect others to treat you as brilliant? Have the conviction and faith in yourself and your ideas. Gary Dahl, the creator of Pet rock, became a millionaire just because he believed that people would want to have rock as a pet. However dumb the idea was, he promoted it well with a proper 32-page manual to train the ‘pet’ to ‘sit’ & ‘stay’. 

3. For a businessman, travel is work; for a traveler, it is experience.

When you are invested in doing what you love, working towards success in itself  becomes like tasting success. If you are a painter, you will have a piece of success every time you create work. And the process in itself will be so beautiful despite the hours of relentless back-numbing work. Follow your heart, and invest all your energies in doing justice to what your heart wants.

4. Owning a tea-stall is not a requirement to becoming The Prime Minister of India.

Stop being a victim of narrative fallacy. If you want to achieve success, you need to stop believing in the stories you have created around yourselves that blamed your mediocre life on the situations or people in your life. Excuses are just the projection of all your fears. 

5. I played States, if not National.

Succeeding at something that does not seem like your purpose will feel like labor. That is the reason why so many corporates, who hibernated their dreams, feel exhausted despite achieving such high positions and salaries. If you work towards your purpose, your dream, every breath you take is invested in making you realize it. The threshold to give up would be way higher, and even if for some reason you decide to give up, you would still be happy and consider yourself successful. 

Stay connected to your roots and your core values. Be humble enough to bring about a change in the world with your success. Share your success with those who are less fortunate and help them realize their dreams.  

Keep exploring this national park!

Be proactive. Newton wasn’t waiting for the apple to fall on him. And it probably wasn’t the first time something might have fallen on someone’s head. He probably was on his quest to bigger dreams when this incident pushed him towards thinking that shaped the world. 

It is like evolution, a gradual development, a gradual change. It is not the finish line, nor is it a check box you tick.