Success in Life

 – Lt Col Atul Tyagi –

Is success inlife a mirage? Is it related to popularity, fame, money? Is going ahead in narrowly defined fields at the cost of failure in other equally important fields a success?

Success: Wide Spectrum Paradigm

Success paradigms have a very wide spectrum. Generally success is attributed to people who carry influence, money, fame & recognition. All these parameters are determined by other people only. With this, success is largely a state determined by others & affixed to some.

Is success journey accomplished if you excel in your own tests & also shine as illuminating star as per the standards & judgment of others? What if your own kith & kin who know you better than others, do not love or respect you? What if your wife is about to call an end to relationship; your child trembles at your sight; your friends avoid you due to perceived difference between you & them?

You have glory & recognition to your side, money in your account; fame enveloping you confirming you being successful. What if your father or mother ails from irretrievable disease; you know that they may depart any time & they may also know the same however you do not have time to spend those moments with them fearing the name & fame may elude you.

You are popular & influential & carry a social identity however your identity amongst your brothers & sisters may cause discordant notes.

You are appreciated by your employees & subordinates for the path you traversed in short while &they declared it a successful voyage however you could not transfer good morals & values to progenies.
You are award winner & socially amicable person however you could neither love family members nor receive love from them.
To sum it all, you have every material comfort, social recognition, popularity & status unparalleled in society but you are unhealthy & unhappy, dissatisfied, love starved & on the toes throughout  however you could not get the purpose of living.

Most People’s Success Paradigm Is Narrow

A person is fully successful in life only if he achieves success in all the spheres of life: personal life, professional life, home life, family life, married life, human life, social life etc. However, most people’s paradigm of success is quite narrowly defined. For some, only becoming rich is success, for some getting a particular award is ultimate success, for some bringing up the family decently is success and for some, TV and newspapers flashing their pictures frequently is equivalent of success. The fact of life is that many people do believe in these narrowly defined paradigms of success. If they see others getting these kinds of successes in these narrow fields, they feel impressed by such persons and many times they feel bad about themselves since they could not achieve that kind of success. Wealth accumulation is another effective parameter to evaluate success now a days. Same question arises when people label someone successful because he is highly learned. For one to be labeled highly learned, does one need to acquire four PhDs or five post graduate degrees or any decent college education is good enough?

Questions Answered

Is it really possible to achieve success in every aspect of human life in superlative degrees (i.e. more success)?
The answer is “yes” and “no”- both. It will entirely depend on each person as to what and how much and how well he does in each aspect of his life.
If getting success like this in all the aspects of life is possible, then, why a large section of people do not achieve this? The answer is: imbalance.
If one is willing to think of ways and means of increasing your effectiveness and efficiency and implementing them in your day-to-day life, more and more quality and quantity of successes can be achieved in large majority of all important aspects of your life without neglecting any one of them.

Paradigms and Paradigm Shift
Another important next logical step one must take to achieve success in life (in personal, family, professional and social life) is “Paradigms and Paradigm Shift.
It is due to “paradigms” that a person’s day to day actions and behavior are decided. So, questioning your paradigms whether they are effective or ineffective, right or wrong is an important aspect of your life if you wish to be successful. More correct paradigms will lead you to the path of success, the less correct ones or wrong ones will lead you another path which may not lead you to success. Loving one’s own mother tongue is a good paradigm but not learning other languages or hating them is a backward paradigm. So the people who get stuck with this paradigm will never attempt to learn a new language (say, English which is pretty much used language in the most places of the world these days). This will put them to disadvantage in many aspects of their personal, professional and social life. The person having such a paradigm problem must question his paradigm, get more knowledge about the advantages of learning the popular languages of the world and use the will power to start learning them.
This is how one shifts from a rigid paradigm and becomes flexible and shifts to a more effective or advanced paradigm.

Goal Setting

Goal setting exercise is very important. Purposes of goals are: to focus attention, to give a time frame to work and in which to plan, to help motivate others and to ensure everybody is clear about what is happening.Goal or target setting is done on short term, medium term and long term basis. In the context of personal goals, one can even think of setting up life time goals.

Goals should be SMART:

Goals should be specific (S)
Goals should measurable (M)
Goals should be agreed (by you and with others) (A)
Goals should be realistic (R) and
Goals should be timed (should be achieved in a specified time) (T)

If your goals do not meet the criteria listed above, they cannot be called goals. You will have to revisit them and redefine them in order to make sure that they stand true to the above-mentioned five criteria.

Success: Daily Management

Important aspect in daily management is that the management should be done on a day-to-day basis. This ensures that daily jobs and daily objectives are accomplished strictly on daily basis. There is a perfect control system built into daily management which does not ordinarily allow any slip up on daily plans, activities and results.

Daily activities need to be choreographed.
Daily plan should be derived from the goal setting exercise.
Tasks & Activities are borne out of day’s plan.
Daily tasks once executed need to be evaluated on continuous basis to ensure high productivity.
From time to during the day, you must keep a track of your actual accomplishment of activities/tasks against your plan. This is the control aspect of daily management. If you do so, the slip-ups in the day will be minimum and you will easily glide towards achieving your goals or objectives.

Success, everyone wants it, but most of us really have no idea how to achieve it or even what it isSuccess is a state of mind & all-encompassing phenomenon which varies case to case however considering human nature, contemporary values & beliefs, it is important to widen the field with inclusive approach. Success is not tangible but an intangible phenomenon, the feeling of which may happen inside only.The best revenge is massive success.

No one is going to hand me success. I must go out & get it myself. That’s why I’m here. To dominate. To conquer. Both the world, and myself.

— Unknown

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A Brief:
Lt Col Atul Tyagi