Finding the Key to Success

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”  ― Winston S. Churchill

The path to success has always been riddled with hardship and potholed with struggles. However, much like the cocoon of a butterfly, it is the struggles that strengthen the resolve to tread on.

I remember as a child, closely watching organized lines of ants on their way to their ‘hill’.

Quite mischievous for my age, I would consciously try to block their path with stones and paper.

I noticed that, every time I put something before them, the ants, instead of getting disheartened, worked their way around it, till a clear path was in sight. My every try to suppress them only made them more determined to succeed, until after repeated attempts, a very miserable me, finally gave up and let them have their way.

What I learned, thus, from these tiny beings was a lesson to last for a lifetime, that is, to be both determined and persistent.

The road to success is extremely similar to this. It is interspersed with hurdles that one can overcome only through determination, persistence and a zeal to succeed.

A similar story revolves around the persistent activities of a spider . Even though extremely wary of them, this particular story stuck to me for years to come. The story goes to say that a disillusioned King, having lost a series of wars, was taking refuge in a cave. It was in this cave that he noticed a spider was trying to climb the wall.

The king noticed that even after repeated attempts and failures, the spider didn’t once give up, till he finally managed to scale the wall and reach his goal.

What the spider, thus, taught the king was to never give up and to take each failure as another chance to complete a task in a different way.  Even today, especially as an entrepreneur, the spider (of course in imagination!!) has inspired me to never give up.

The basic misunderstanding today is that success is an easy reach and can be achieved with minimal effort and limited input. In this fast-paced world with our shortening attention spans, we are being conditioned to expect immediate results without putting in any effort.

Therefore, what one needs to do today is to focus on undying passion, limitless ambition and a zeal to succeed, no matter what.

After all, it is our struggles, experiences and hurdles that strengthen us to face challenges and make us who we are.

“Sometimes it takes a good fall to really know where you stand”

― Hayley Williams