“There is no elevator to success. You have to take the stairs.”
This article depicts Failures as the stepping stones of success and concludes Realistic optimism as our attitude in comprehending the dictionary of life!
During my days at University of Delhi I observed getting in a good college was a matter of pride and it involved a great physical and mental exertion in appearing and qualifying for different entrance test of B-Schools (Business Schools) viz. CAT, XAT, FMS, MAT, CET, etc. 14000-30000 people fight for the 40-60 seats (on an average). The aspirants for Civil services exams (IAS, IES) are stretched over different student-friendly areas in an around University vicinity in thousands. When it comes to getting a good job at a good incorporation, there is another hundred people contending for the same job. What everyone requires conclusively is a Success. Getting a job with SCBNL is also synonymous to ‘Success’.
Success is the most interesting, and a beautiful word that everyone wants to have in their book called LIFE again and again. Failure is a word, which most of us wants to chafe away or at least don’t want to inscribe in our book called LIFE. Success rather brings lots of enthusiasm, great amount of power, morale and royalty. We feel like we are on the top of a mountain playing with the clouds. Failure brings us into despair, leads us to utter dejection, ruins us, shatters us and shows us what it means to live in a hell. Many people feel that failures should not be a part of their life and that it should be failure free life. Some people fight with their failures, and after having fought enough they escape paving their way into some other alternative. Some people “QUIT” after fighting from failures, and end their life. Some people cry cry and cry in the ocean of sadness and get used to it.
A normal average human being perceives success and failure in this naive definition.
But Failure is just not the license of an average people. Many great people, entity, organization were great “Failures” once. If you read the biography or surf in the internet, the life history of many great and famous people, you will get to know their path of success was very stiff full of struggles, failures and dejections.
Many times in our lives, we are dropped, crumpled, and ground into the dirt by the decisions we make and the circumstances that come our way. We feel as though we are worthless. But no matter what has happened or what will happen, you will never lose your value. You are special - Don't ever forget it! Winner is one who “reads his failures” and “runs towards his life” and they say if you want success desperately, you have to fail miserably. If you have never failed—you have never lived.
Thomas Alva Edison was exclaimed as “stupid to learn anything” and can never be successful in life by one of his class teacher. He later on emerged as the “Godfather of Light”; he gave the sunshine to everyone. He failed 999 times while in the process of inventing ‘The Bulb’. He succeeded the 1000th time. What if Thomas gave up just before the 1000th attempt? Abraham Lincoln’s Fiancée expired, he failed in business for 2 times, he lost in elections for 8 times, he had a serious nervous breakdown, he was let down completely by failures, still he went on his way to become The 16th President of United States of America. The Beatles, an English rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, was turned down, was forced to shut down, as it had a poor quality of sound output, and the guitars they used were not impressive and outdated. The troop comprehended their failures, and went on with their life to emerge as the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music in the world. Michael Jordan was dropped from his school basket ball team, as he was not able to put the ball in the basket. He was injured several times and missed 64 straight matches. He couldn’t throw the ball into the basket in many final matches. He read from his failures, went on with his life and won 40 awards in the world of NBA (National Basketball Association), won 2 Olympic gold medals, and is now better known as a Basket Ball Legend. In 1944, Emmeline Snively, director of the Blue Book Modeling Agency, told modeling hopeful Norma Jean Baker, "You'd better learn secretarial work or else get married." I'm sure you know that Norma Jean was Marilyn Monroe. Now . . . who was Emmeline Snively? Louis Pasteur was only a mediocre pupil in undergraduate studies and ranked 15th out of 22 students in chemistry. Henry Ford failed and went broke five times before he succeeded. Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor because "he lacked imagination and had no good ideas." He went bankrupt several times before he built Disneyland. In 1954, Jimmy Denny, manager of the Grand Ole Opry, fired Elvis Presley after one performance. He told Presley, “You ain't going' nowhere, son. You ought to go back to driving' a truck”. Beethoven handled the violin awkwardly and his teacher called him "hopeless as a composer”. He wrote five of his greatest symphonies while completely deaf. The Impressionists had to arrange their own art exhibitions because their works were routinely rejected by the Paris Salon. How many of you have heard of the Paris Salon? Michael Caine's headmaster told him, "You will be a laborer all your life. Lucille Ball was dismissed from her drama school, because her teachers criticized her that she was very shy in acting, lacked acting skills and couldn’t get her foot ahead for good acting. She read her failures and went on to become all time great American comedienne, film, television, radio actress, and holds a special identity for having one of the longest careers in Hollywood. Charlie Chaplin was initially rejected by Hollywood studio chiefs because his pantomime was considered "nonsense. English crime novelist John Creasey got 753 rejection slips before he published 564 books. Amitabh Bachchan gave up his job as a freight broker for a shipping firm in Calcutta to move to Bombay. Months of struggle followed. He was tall and of dark complexion, he could not match to the requirement of film directors as lover boy. Ironically known for his rich voice, he was rejected by All India Radio and even played a mute in one of his early films. Leo Tolstoy flunked out of college. He was described as both "unable and unwilling to learn and a slow developer." Winston Churchill failed sixth grade. Bill Gates did not have a definite study plan while a student at Harvard and eventually dropped out of Harvard in 1975.
The list of famous, rich and successful people who were either High school or college dropouts is quite extensive. Few of them are well known to us. The list starts from yesteryear’s Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Charles Dickens, John F. Kennedy, Clint Eastwood, Henry Ford, Robert Frost, Orville Wright, Wilbur Wright, Abraham Lincoln, William Shakespeare, Marilyn Monroe, John Jacob Astor, George Washington, Bjorn Borg, Woody Allen, Robert De Niro, Dhirubhai Ambani, Frederick Henry Royce, George Bernard Shaw, Leo Tolstoy, Ted Turner, Mark Twain, H.G. Wells, Steve Jobs, Boris Becker, Sharon Stone… to modern days famous populace viz., Paul Allen, Bryan Adams, Ben Affleck, Andre Agassi, Steve Ballmer, Drew Barrymore, Halle Berry, Richard Branson, Pierce Brosnan, Gisele Caroline Bündchen, James Cameron, Jim Carrey, Paulo Coelho, Michael Dell, Leonardo DiCaprio, Snoop Dogg, Larry Ellison, Eminem, 50 Cent, Bobby Fischer, Richard Gere, Steffi Graf, Tom Hanks, Sachin Tendulkar, Paris Hilton, Keira Knightley, Ralph Lauren, Brad Pitt, Daniel Radcliffe, J.K. Rowling, Julia Roberts, Shakira, Will Smith, Britney Spears, Steven Spielberg, Hilary Swank, John Travolta, Mike Tyson, Bruce Willis, Tiger Woods, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Mark Zuckerberg, Christina Aguilera, Jennifer Aniston, etc… The list is endless.
It unquestionably makes you wonder what the world would be like if they had given up?
The fact is that there are things that we all experience trials, sufferings and pain. That's part of living, included in the package of life. But don't give up just because someone throws a rock on your feet. Step on it! Use it to reach what you dream for. All great people suffered from great failures, but it didn’t stop them from doing what they want to. These examples of well-known people aren't just fiction. And if they can, you can too. Just believe, have perseverance, have faith, and most of all, BE YOU! Remember, if you have never failed...you've never lived!
Positive thinking plays a big part in determining whether you will be successful or not. The more positive you are the more likely you are to succeed. Of course, there are other factors that would influence your chance of success – connections, luck, fate, ‘cats’— but as they say, success is 99% perspiration, so get sweating. The pursuit of happiness is an inward journey. Our minds are like programs, awaiting the code that will determine behaviors; like bank vaults awaiting our deposits. If we regularly deposit positive, encouraging, and uplifting thoughts, if we continue to bite our lips just before we begin to grumble and complain, if we shoot down that seemingly harmless negative thought as it germinates, we will find that there is much to rejoice about.
"Nothing is ever completely wrong; even a broken clock is right twice a day."
The World Economy witnessed the collapse of the housing bubble and the advent of “Subprime” crisis, which peaked in the U.S. in 2006, causing the values of securities tied to real estate pricing to plunge thereafter, damaging financial institutions globally. The result was the financial crisis of 2007 (The year I joined MBA at University of Delhi) to the present which has been a crisis like The Great Depression (1930s) triggered by a liquidity shortfall in the United States banking system. It has resulted in the disintegration of large financial institutions, the bailout of banks by national governments, and downturns in stock markets around the world. In many areas, the housing market has also suffered, resulting in numerous evictions, foreclosures and prolonged vacancies. It contributed to the failure of key businesses, declines in consumer wealth estimated in the hundreds of billions of U.S. dollars, substantial financial commitments incurred by governments, and a significant decline in economic activity. The effect was so huge that many nations from different continents witnessed its obnoxious impact. One of the long-term worldwide consequences of the economic breakdown is the 2010 European sovereign debt crisis that primarily impacted five countries: Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Italy, and Spain. Icelandic financial crisis was one of the ruthless collapse of UK banking system- the largest suffered by any country in the economic history. The Arab world had lost $3 trillion due to the crisis. As a result there was falls in trade, commodity prices, investment and remittances sent from migrant workers. Implications were seen as a dramatic rise in the number of households living below the poverty line, be it 300,000 in Bangladesh or 230,000 in Ghana. The job opportunities in the Indian market got significantly condensed. As result many organizations refrained from visiting B-schools for campus placements and we had one of the most disappointing college placements in the year 2009. Our country, Nepal being a small economy was emancipated from severity of the Global crisis and if there was some repercussion seen, the degree was insignificant in comparison to other developing nations and developed economy.
The history of world economy also saw the fall of giant business empires like ENRON (American Energy Company which become a popular symbol of willful corporate fraud and corruption), WorldCom, etc in early 2000 and collapse or takeover of several key firms such as Lehman Brothers, AIG, Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns, HBOS, etc in 2008. Isn’t it all a great business failure?
But like the rich, famous and successful people, the World Economy read from its failures and then there was a herald of economy recuperating from the quagmire of Global Economic crisis. The Governments and central banks responded with unprecedented fiscal stimulus, monetary policy expansion, and institutional bailouts. The big financial powers started reducing their lending, hoarding cash and shrinking the money supply. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley became commercial banks, subjecting themselves to more stringent regulation. The response of the U.S. Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, and other central banks was immediate and dramatic. United States President Barack Obama and key advisers introduced a series of regulatory proposals addressing consumer protection, executive pay, bank capital requirements, expanded regulation of the shadow banking system and derivatives and additional regulations limiting the ability of banks to engage in proprietary trading. The growing optimism will certainly replenish the world economy to its original vigorous shape sooner or later.
This article is an inspiration from the episodes of many great people who were great “Failures” once and from situations/circumstances that were considered as “doomed ones” at one point of time.
Many times we feel like a failure. Things done with utmost passion gets badly criticized. We feel we have failed and lose hope but have we ever tried thinking that every time we have failed; we have made a successful attempt at doing what we wanted to. Failure is a part of life and we should never lose the hope in what we believe. So go and fail! As they say, “You have never lived, if you never failed”. To reiterate, the pursuit of happiness is a matter of choice. It is a positive attitude we consciously choose to express. It is not a gift that gets delivered to our doorstep each morning, nor does it come through the window. And we must comprehend our circumstances are just a small part of what makes us joyful. If we wait for them to get just right, we will never find lasting joy. The key factor — success is not only determined by the kind of attitude you have but also by how bad you want it (which is to be followed by a plan of action). If you depend on positivity, you are on your way to writing your own blueprint to success.
One must never stop learning- both learning from mistakes and learning from surroundings. Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at 20 or 80. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young as Henry Ford quotes.
We must accentuate on the fact that many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our lives. If God allowed us to go through our lives without any obstacles, it would cripple us. We would not be as strong as what we could have been. We could never fly! Failures are a chance to learn and transform ourselves. Failures squeeze us and expose us neat and clean like a washing machine. Failing is just like fountain as much you press it hard that much strongly shoots upwards when you release your fingers. Whoever says life is easy is out of his mind. Whoever doesn’t have any problem is not alive. Remember………
If you have never failed...you've never lived!
Contributed by-
SUDARSHAN PARAJULI
1349081
Personal loan, Consumer Banking
STANDARD CHARTERED BANK
Reference source: Wikipedia, Google, etc
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