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by Jayaram V
How you build your life depends upon what you do with it. Your success, your
achievements, your happiness, your goals, your
friendships come from you not from your circumstances, unless you
want to give up your control to extrinsic factors and place more
emphasis on the world that exists outside you rather than the
world that exists with in you. If you start early with definite
aims and goals, you have better chances of seeing yourself leading
a better life than if you start rather late in life. It does not
mean one cannot achieve success later in life. These principles can be applied
irrespective of age, place and gender. But in case of older people it will
require a
greater discipline and hard work to make them work. As people grow in age
they will develop certain tendencies, attitudes,
habits and thinking patterns that are difficult to overcome and
may interfere with their goals and success.
Discipline: Discipline does not mean you have to wake up
early in the morning, do meditation and then go on doing your
daily work. Many successful people are in fact disciplined this
way with a rigid
daily program of their own waking up early, doing exercise and
dieting and focusing on routine. However, there are also some successful
people who
wake up late and go to bed late, but manage to live well and
achieve success in their professions. It depends upon whether you are a late night person or
early morning person. Discipline has nothing to do with breaking
your body rhythms or resetting your biological clock. If you want
to be the early bird your mother always wanted
you to be, please go ahead and fulfill her wish. But that alone
would not guarantee you success. Waking up early before the sun rise may be a
requirements in certain disciplines such as music and traditional
arts, but not necessarily a guarantor of success. In many
countries nightshift people earn more money than the day shift
people.
Discipline means to
stick to your plan, to go till the end of the road, to persevere
in the face of difficulties, to remain committed to whatever you
have decided to achieve. Discipline means to play the game
according to rules, to be on the right side
of things and righteous, even under tempting circumstances.
Discipline means to achieve whatever you wanted to achieve, giving
your hundred percent, no matter what the challenges are and
believe in your ability to achieve it. Discipline is both physical
and mental. Discipline of body involves proper rest, good diet and
regular exercise. Discipline of mind involves thought control, affirmations,
meditation, positive
attitude, virtuous thinking and
cultivating the noble qualities of love, compassion, understanding
and happiness. Discipline of life involves appropriate social
behavior in all circumstances, positive and healthy interpersonal
relationships, accepting responsibility for ones actions and doing
good to others at every opportunity.
Working Hard and Working Smart: Whether you are born in a poor family or rich
family, commitment to hard and smart work is the center of your success, the hub around
which you organize your life and build your plans. No doubt the
get rich quick schemes and shortcuts to wealth are very tempting
alternatives but look at the risks to rewards ratio. If there are
certain schemes that make one rich instantaneously why in the
world there are so many poor people? The internet is a busy market
place where you see tempting offers every day. Some one from
France informs you that you have been chosen for a secret inheritance.
A mysterious bank official from Africa offers to deposit in your
bank account a few million dollars if you are willing to partner
with him in a money transfer deal. A lottery company from England
declares you a winner of jackpot even if you never bought a
ticket. These spam mails are in circulation despite the negative
publicity, the effort of the courts and the law agencies, because
there are still gullible people who are willing to give a try! It
is a measure of greed to which people are willing to commit.
The rich people are a minority in the world, but own a major
portion of the world's wealth, because they work hard and work
smart. More than 80% world population is poor not because there are limited opportunities, but because
there are few who are willing to commit themselves to a disciplined
life of hard work and perseverance. Hard work does not mean sheer
physical labor. It is much more than that. It means more guts,
more enthusiasm, more energy, more commitment, more intelligence,
an eye for opportunity, creativity in work and efficiency and
effectiveness. It requires more energy to keep money
rather than earning it. If you are not convinced, ask the people
who have earned unexpected wealth and lost most of it due to some
mistakes. It needs a great deal of attention to detail and very
persistent effort to keep what you have and build further on it.
It requires to stay at what you are doing and keep doing it
while the world seems to be out on a party. It means making
sacrifices and undergoing the pain of physical and mental
discomfort to achieve your goals within the time frame you
planned. It means having a good opinion of yourself and your
ability to accomplish things. It means looking for inspiration
within rather than without. It means inspiring the rest of
your team, if you are running a business of your own, by showing
your commitment and raising the bar by setting a personal example.
Values: Values are what you consider to be important for
you, your profession, your family or for the world in general. For
some wealth is a value, for some discipline, for some integrity,
for some health, for some happiness, for some family, for some
their jobs, for some global environment, or moral purity, or
scientific temper or a combination of these and many more.
Whatever may be your values, certain standards are important when it
comes to choosing values. Your values should be positive, lawful,
moral and must contribute to the overall well being and happiness
of yourself, your family and others, who may be impacted by your thoughts
and actions. In Hinduism there are
four chief aims of life,
dharma, artha, kama and moksha. Dharma means righteousness. Artha
means material wealth. Kama means fulfillment and moksha means
liberation or salvation.
It is important to see that dharma comes
before the rest of the aims. Righteousness or dharma is the
foundation on which you build the rest of your values and aims.
Moksha or spiritual liberation does not come unless wealth is
gained through righteous means and fulfillment is sought in a
righteous way. These four aims are important. They are
interconnected. But dharma or righteousness is the first goal, the
precondition, because in the end, when all is
done and one is at the end of the journey it is dharma that will
become the guiding factor for the onward continuity of the soul. Whether they are religious or not, believe in
Hinduism or not, a
great majority of people in the world pursue these four goals in one way or
the other and consider life to be incomplete without any of them.
However not all would place dharma as the foremost of all the
goals. There are many people amidst us who
give least importance to the principles of morality and ethics in matters of doing
business. They strive to gain wealth (artha) by whatever means and
whatever cost and seek fulfillment of their desires through questionable
behavior, ignoring the amount of harm they may be dong to
themselves in their blind pursuit for success. The Ten
Commandments and the Eightfold Path are not meant for practicing
monks but for the people who want to lead balanced lives by practicing
virtue in the midst of worldly activities.
There are many other important areas in life that need to be
worked on for success and fulfillment. It is very important to
share your success with others through selfness and charity. If
you look at life in terms of continuity, a process that goes beyond this life
and perhaps many other lives and that your actions will have
ripple effect not only on you but on others, not just now but for
several years to come, you will perhaps learn to take more responsibility
for your actions and goals and look at your life with a different perspective.
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