SEARCHING FOR SUCCESS

“Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself. Do not go out and look for a successful person and duplicate him.”

These words of advice were recorded by Professor Stephen Hawking, the world renowned, British theoretical physicist, whose work on quantum physics and general relativity has revolutionized scientific thinking. He is a specially gifted man who has achieved the very highest pinnacle of professional success despite being a severe victim of ALS since he was 21 years old. The disease has rendered him severely debilitated, confined permanently to a wheelchair and able to communicate only with the help of a sophisticated computer and the movement of a single cheek muscle. But this has not interfered with him leading a full personal and professional life including having a family and recently indicating an intention to travel to outer space. The quotation has always impressed me as a genuinely profound advice that can be given to anyone in search of his personal success. It is the one that I have passed on to each of my children and continue to remind them of its validity.

Far too often, we tend to accept the popular view that the term success should be reserved for those people who have achieved materialistic or personality dominance, and whose names appear constantly before us. The tendency is to essentially focus mainly on those ‘successful’ people who have achieved public attention and notoriety, such as those in sport and in the popular entertainment media, as well as the financially successful ones who are able to project themselves and their varied achievements to the public. But however much these people deserve the recognition and the accompanying accolades, let us never believe that true success belongs exclusively to these few. In fact, every person who has chosen his road to success and who has set out on the journey and has achieved the results he sought is undoubtedly a success. For in order for him to have achieved his goal, he would have had to harness his inner dreams, expend his energies, confront his failures and move beyond his comfort zone.

 To my mind the success attained by Warren Buffett or Jeff  Bezos in building their wonderful business empires, as brilliant, magical and mind-boggling as they may be, is not qualitatively different from that of the small neighborhood pizza shop-owner who started on a hope and a shoe-string to obtain a better life for his family. Or for that matter, is there any fundamental difference between the joy and success experienced by Usain Bolt winning the Olympic 100 meter gold medal and the handicapped young man who triumphed in the 100 meters sprint finals at the World Special Olympics held in the same venue, shortly after.

         True Success indeed, has always been in the eyes of the beholder. It has nothing to do with trying to build a bigger ego and even less in trying to impress more people; -this type of success is artificial and egotistic. But it has everything to do with the deep-seated desire of an individual to achieve the goal he set for himself, however small or large that may be, and ultimately to achieve the satisfaction and happiness of completion. This to me is the real meaning of success and the one that people strive to achieve constantly. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, one of America’s greatest and most successful men of letters very effectively placed the true concept of success in the following context:

“The talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do, well. And doing well whatever you do, without thought of fame. If it comes at all, it will come because it is deserved, not because it is sought after.”

The examples of successful people that have crossed my path in my life- time are countless in numbers. Their names and faces are equally countless and their stories are all different and varied, but in each one of them the message remains the same. A message that was so beautifully incorporated in Lance Armstrong’s own fundamental motto of:

“Looking at every obstacle as an opportunity,

 Always working as hard as one can, and

 Never accepting that anything is impossible.” 

         In the end, after all is said and done, perhaps Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great American essayist, lecturer, poet and philosopher who lived during most of the nineteenth century, deserves to have the last word when he recorded his views on success in the following observation:

“To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, to leave the world a better place, to know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.”

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