Success is often defined as the accomplishment of a set goal. When I was young I used to think that to get success one must work hard, but with the passage of time, I realized that it’s not only doing hard work (Physical Quotient) which leads to success, we need something else. After studying several books and theories my thinking got the required clarity.
A student, for example, studies for 7 hours a day and scores 70 % marks, whereas, there are other students who study less but score more. How or why is it possible? It’s possible because these students possess higher IQ (Intelligence Quotient). So, to get success we need both Physical Quotient (hard work) and Intelligent Quotient. Intelligent people do work smartly and from there only we got the concept of Hard Work and Smart Work.
‘One day an unemployed young person went to a businessman and asked for a job. The businessman gave him an axe and asked him to go to the forest with other wood cutters to cut wood. He offered him Rs. 250 per day. He accepted the offer and started to do his job happily. After few days he noticed that another wood cutter was not working as hard as him, rather he was taking long rests but at the end of the day, this other man got Rs. 400 from the businessman. The next day the young wood cutter went to the businessman and asked him, ‘why are you paying him more? He takes rest a lot and doesn’t work as hard as I do.’ The businessman calmly told him to follow and observe the old woodcutter sincerely. Next day, the young man went to cut wood in the forest and started to follow the old man sincerely. He found that the old man was seemed to take rest but actually he was sharpening his axe. Then with his sharp axe he was cutting more wood and that too very easily. So, at the end of the day this old man had more wood and so earned more.’
So a smart worker can easily outperform a hard worker. In our professional or personal life we must not be jealous of a person who earns or achieves more; or we should blame our destiny, rather we must try to understand and learn their hidden talents and skills from them so that we can upgrade ourselves.
A student who possess higher PQ and IQ, becomes nervous during the exam or interview, his performance will not be as per the expectation. So, In addition to these two quotients, he needs something more and that is Emotional Intelligence or Emotional Quotient (EQ). Emotional Quotient has four dimensions – (a) Understanding one’s own emotion (b) Controlling one’s own emotion (c) Understanding others emotion and (d) Controlling others emotions. An emotionally balanced person can avoid unnecessary conflicts, manage stress etc. thus excels in professional and personal life. People having higher EQ generally do not get easily disturbed by the behavior or action of others.
A person surprised his family by purchasing his dream Harley-Davidson bike. Seeing the bike his wife and 4-year old son got extremely excited and they demanded for a ride, so the couple went inside their home to bring their helmets. Through the window, the man saw his son was doing something on the oil tank with the key of the bike. He knew that his son had a bad habit of writing everywhere and making things dirty. He immediately rushed towards the bike while shouting at his son. He saw his son was scratching his beautiful new bike. He got very furious; he lost his brain and impulsively smashed the child’s palm with the helmet in his hand. The child winched with tremendous pain, blood splashed on the oil tank. His soft, tender fingers deformed. His mother came running; understanding the urgency of the situation, she picked child up; took him into her car and drove towards hospital. The traumatized child was shockingly looking at his father from the moving car. His father realized his mistake and kicked the bike and started to cry. He went to the hospital immediately and found that his son had been taken to the operation theatre. The doctor came out and informed that two fingers had to be amputated. The heavy-hearted father, with guilty conscience, didn’t know how to face his son. After getting back consciousness, the only sentence, the child said, ‘Sorry Papa, I will not do it again.’ The man went back home and saw the blood stained helmet lying beside the bike; and on the oil tank, it was written- ‘I love you papa, you are the best papa’. The man fell on the ground, crying loudly; he could only see those small hands with beautiful little fingers; soft and fresh. He wished if he could once delete that impulsive moment from their life.
An emotionally intelligent person does have the higher probability of achieving his target or getting the desired job or promotion but can never sustain there for long, if he does not possess or develop Social and Spiritual Quotient.
Man is a social animal, so, we are interdependent and not independent. Most of the times, our response to external stimuli depends on what we receive through our sense organs and how do we process it. A child from birth can identify the difference between sorrow and happiness though it has no previous experience. Societal norms are culturally transmitted from one generation to another and not genetically. However, in our brain we have Mirror Neurons, that is why we feel happy when we see happy people; we smile when we see smiling faces; we feel sad when we see people crying around us and so on. So we can be happy in a happy society; stressful and depressed in a stressful and depressed environment. So we must select our company carefully and through our own behaviour, personality, attitude and reaction we should always try to spread and imbibe Positive Emotions, Values, Ethics, and Empathies around us, which are ingredients of high Social Quotient.
A middle aged woman used to live with her teenage son, beside a forest. One fine morning, after her son went to work, a beggar came beside her window while repeating the same sentences again and again:
“DO GOOD, IT WILL BE RETURNED TO YOU; DO BAD, IT WILL BE RETURNED TO YOU”.
“DO GOOD, IT WILL BE RETURNED TO YOU; DO BAD, IT WILL BE RETURNED TO YOU”
Listening to the words of the beggar, the lady smiled and went near the window but she couldn’t see the beggar, she could only see his raised hands, she could only hear his words:
“DO GOOD, IT WILL BE RETURNED TO YOU; DO BAD, IT WILL BE RETURNED TO YOU”.
The lady gave him some bread with butter; the beggar took it and left slowly while uttering the same sentence again and again. His voice faded slowly and softly. The lady felt very happy throughout the day but her happiness faded after evening as her son didn’t return. She was confused and nervous. Her brain went blank; she could only hear the words of the beggar:
“DO GOOD, IT WILL BE RETURNED TO YOU; DO BAD, IT WILL BE RETURNED TO YOU”.
Next morning the beggar begged in the same style. The lady with tears in her eyes served the beggar with bread and butter. The day passed, her son didn’t return. The words of the beggar became earworm for the lady:
“DO GOOD, IT WILL BE RETURNED TO YOU; DO BAD, IT WILL BE RETURNED TO YOU”.
Next morning the lady thought that her son disappeared and the beggar appeared from nowhere. She felt angry, she thought, ‘helping people in this 21st century is the wrong deed, one must be realistic, materialistic and professional’. She got very furious; and hatred engulfed her thought process. She cursed the beggar for her son’s disappearance. She brought some poison and mixed it with the bread and butter and placed it on the window. The voice of the old beggar started to arrive, it was becoming louder and louder with every approaching step:
“DO GOOD, IT WILL BE RETURNED TO YOU; DO BAD, IT WILL BE RETURNED TO YOU”.
Suddenly the motherly affection of the lady wiped out all insanity from the mind and she threw away those poisonous breads and replaced it with fresh ones. The beggar took it and went away uttering the same words:
“DO GOOD, IT WILL BE RETURNED TO YOU; DO BAD, IT WILL BE RETURNED TO YOU”.
After few hours, the lady heard a knocking in the door. She rushed to open the door. It was her own son standing in front of her; weak and tired. She hugged him with tears of happiness. Her son told her that while coming home he fell in a pit and could not come out of it. Without food and water he was about to die and then he heard a voice:
“DO GOOD, IT WILL RETURN BACK TO YOU; DO BAD, IT WILL RETURN BACK TO YOU”.
He shouted for help. An old beggar appeared and helped him to get out of the pit and gave him some bread, butter and water. He felt strong enough to walk to his home. The lady saw those poisonous breads, lying beside the door. She told her son:
“DO GOOD, IT WILL BE RETURNED TO YOU; DO BAD, IT WILL BE RETURNED TO YOU”. (Concept of the story is taken form NPTEL Course by Prof. (Dr.) T Ravichandran, IIT Kanpur).
Whatever we give to the society, we get in return the same thing but may be in a different form. Success, accompanied by values, ethics, humanity and empathy makes a life beautiful and worthy of living. Happy and stress free life make us more productive. Karna, a man of ideal character, most efficient warrior & greatest donor, was doomed purely due to his bad company and curses; while Arjuna’s good company and blessings saved him, made him great and successful. Our activities determine whether blessings or curses will be showered upon us.
Warren Buffett, in one of his annual reports, quoted a famous line of Peter Lynch, (one of the world’s greatest Fund Manager) – ‘Selling your winners and holding your losers is like cutting the flowers and watering the weeds.’ Sometimes we do the same thing in our life also, we try hard to be with and make friendship with our enemies and unscrupulous people; and on the contrary we ignore and destroy the bonding with our real friends and well-wishers. The psychological urge or focus on having what we don’t have; and ignoring what we already have, is the main cause of stress, anxiety and unhappiness. This type of reverse psychology should be avoided as a student or as a professional for a better and meaningful life.
One day a snake coiled a saw while moving and it got some cuts and it started to feel the pain. The snake thought that the saw is the reason of its pain. So it tried to destroy the saw by coiling it with more pressure. And in this process it was cutting and hurting itself more and more.
Sometimes we blame others for our own failure and start to treat them as our enemy but in reality it is not so. We should learn to focus on our internal locus. At the same time we must realize that our present situation is due to our past activities and our future will be based on our present activities.
The qualities of a spiritually intelligent person are nearly same just like that of a Self Actualized Person, as mentioned by Maslow in his Hierarchy Need. A Self Actualized Person holds the top most position of Maslow’s Hierarchy Need Pyramid. Researchers like – Daniel Goleman, Danah Zohar, Ken O’Donnel, Robert Emmons, Frances Vaughan, Cindy Wigglesworth, Yosi Amram, David B. King etc. have given their own theories on Spiritual Quotient. The details of the theory will not be given here as I am leaving it to readers for doing a little research in Google or YouTube.
Jack Ma in an interview in Tel Aviv University talked about Love Quotient; it’s an echo of Steve Jobs Commencement Speech – Do What You Love, Love What You Do. Warren Buffett also believes in the same idea, he only invests business – what he understands and likes.
‘A young shepherd saw the birth of a calf. For the first time he saw life came on earth. The calf was cute and innocent. He instantly fell in love. Then it started to rain heavily. When the rain stopped, it was already late. He found that the little calf was struggling to walk through the muddy grazing field, along with its mother. So out of love he picked up the little calf on his shoulder and started to walk towards home with his other cattle. Next day though the weather improved but the road didn’t. So he again carried the calf to the same pasture. He enjoyed his work, they become very cozy and both of them used to play together throughout the day. The young shepherd used to repeat the same activity every day for about a year. A year passed and the young man became very famous and popular. He became so famous that people used to visit him. He was known as the strongest man of the kingdom, who could carry a fully grown bull on his shoulder and can walk few kilometers.’ – Story taken from Sadhguru, Isha Foundation.
This man never wanted to become famous, but he became famous just because of his love towards the animal. The man did this job without thinking or dreaming about the consequence of his job. This is an important preaching of Lord Krishna through The Gita that is doing the right work and not thinking about the result. Even the concept of ‘Production and Production Capability’ in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey is a vibration of this concept. He emphasized to focus on increasing the Production Capabilities rather than only focusing on the Production, the end result. By doing it production will increase automatically. For a successful professional life there are various theories and concepts. Soft Skills and Hard Skills are also required. Growth mindset, proper Body Language, Leadership qualities and basic knowledge on Time Management, Work Management, Conflict Management, Stress Management etc. can never be ignored. So to succeed, amalgamation of all these skills and talents are required.
However, one must know that knowledge and education without common sense can be very dangerous and deadly. In our early childhood, we read the story of four friends who ventured out to gain knowledge. One day they returned, met together and started to boost about their knowledge. They saw few bones. One of them told that these are the bones of a lion and he arranged those bones properly. Other friend laughed at him and told, ‘I can do better than you, and I can add blood and flesh to it.” He did it impressively. The third friend told,’ I am the most educated among us and I can add life to it’. The fourth friend cautioned them about the consequence but none of them listened to his warning. They were arrant to prove their knowledge and power. Sensing that he was not fit in that group, the fourth friend (being an assertive personality), left their company immediately, and breaking the friendship. The most educated friend continued to prove his power and brought the lion back to life. The lion roared loudly and killed the three friends. The man with common sense and assertive personality went back to his village happily.
Sometimes, the madness of showing power unnecessarily can be destructive. At the same time we must nurture an assertive personality and reject aggressive or submissive (Yes-Man) personality.
Simplicity brings happiness, but sometimes, due to over thinking, we make life complex. One of the qualities of an efficient leadership is to make complex thing simple. Critical mindset and over thinking make simple thing complex.
One renowned soap-manufacturing company faced a critical problem and started to lose the market share rapidly as its wholesalers and retailers complained of empty soap box (box without soap). The CEO of the company called for several meetings and started brain storming with his directors and managers for the solution. The production manager suggested of installing weight machine, connected with a sensor, somewhere in the assembly line. The sales manager requested for a laser sensor etc. It all needed fresh investment. The company was already suffering from negative cash flow, thus, there was shortage of fund. However, something had to be done. After discussion with a tech company they decided to install a robot with a sensor, which will detect the empty box (without soap) and will remove it from the assembly line. When everything was finalized, the CEO himself went with the delegates of the tech company for selecting the location. The CEO told the workers that a very costly robot will be installed to overcome the problem; and they should take extra care of the robot. The CEO noticed that one of the workers was smiling, he asked, why are you smiling?’ The old worker told him, ‘this is a simple problem and it can be solved very easily.’ The managers, present with the CEO, became furious and started to rebuke, ‘you idiot don’t know, when to open your mouth, after doing a lot of brain storming and meetings, we have decided to spend few millions; and you can solve it easily. You must not forget your limit and designation; else you will be kicked out of the company.’ The old worker with a blunt face bogged down. The CEO asked others to stop and asked the old man, ‘to solve the problem how much do you need?’ The Old man told, ‘only few hundreds, sir’. ‘And how long will you take to solve it?’, ‘less than thirty minutes, sir’, said the old man. The CEO gave the old man one thousand rupee note and told him, ‘I am waiting here, solve it’. The Man took the money and went away. He came back within 15 minutes with a high speed table fan and placed it beside the assembly bay. When the empty box arrived it was flown away easily as it had no weight. Concept of the story is taken form P R Sundar, Stock Market trader & Youtuber.
Simplicity is a boon. Prospective idea may come from any person, irrespective of designation, knowledge and age. Common Sense, Simplicity and Transparency are important ingredients of a better life. If you ever asked the question: ‘Am I successful now?’ ask few other questions with it also.
‘Am I happy?’, ‘Do I still possess self-esteem, values and ethics?, ‘Are my family members happy?’, ‘Do I laugh often?’, ‘Do my family members laugh enough?’, ‘Am I healthy?’, ‘Do I have time to spend with my near and dear ones?’, ‘Is the bonding with my friends are still worm?’, ‘Do other people respect me from the core of their heart? If you get positive answers, then Success is yours; and if you get negative answers then it’s time for re-evaluation.
‘This man is freed from servile bands
Of hope to rise or fear to fall:
Lord of himself, though not of lands,
And having nothing, yet hath all.’
–By Sir Henry Wotton
Excellent 👌
Thank you, Sir