Success and Learning: Two faces of a coin

“Antonym of success?”

What result do you get when you type this phrase on the search engine? Did your screen show the seven-letter word ‘Failure’? Let’s get back to this question at the end of this article.

When children learn to walk for the first time, they fall. Do they succeed or fail in their first attempt to walk? They neither succeed nor fail, they learned and kept on learning until they finally succeeded.

Edison failed more than 1000 times before he finally invented the light bulb. Let’s rewrite this; Edison learned more than 1000 times before he finally invented the light bulb.

Did he fail or did he learn? If just replacing a word “failed” by “learned” can give a completely different meaning to a sentence, just imagine what can our lives become if we substitute the word “Failure“ by learning and growth till we finally reach the epitome of success.

All success stories are also stories of great failure. Where there is Will there is a Way. You can give excuses to everyone but yourself. If you really want to achieve something, only you can stop yourself from getting that. The prerequisite is to stay focused on your goal. You should know what you want, clarity is the power.

Every small activity we do has some motivation connected to it. When we work in a certain direction to make anything happen, the motivation should be connected to the internal factor, not the external factor. If connected to an external cause, as soon as the cause is withdrawn, the motivation is lost. Motivation comes from Internal Belief. Set a goal and do whatever it takes to reach the goal. If there is no way, create one, zoom your mind in one direction. Do you know what your limits are? Have you ever assessed your potential? There are no boundaries to your limit - when you stretch you grow, you will then have the limitless limits.

Taking every unsuccessful attempt as failure can make you strongly mental while learning at each such attempt will make you mentally strong. One can have a Hopeless End if they take every unsuccessful event as a failure and on the contrary, they can have an Endless Hope if they learn each time they couldn’t succeed. You are successful when you know that success does not make you and failure does not break you.

There is only one situation where the other side of success can be a failure and it is when we do not give it a second chance. Then it is a failure for sure and the result displayed by your screen is correct. One shall always keep the analytics and continue to monitor the outcome; anything you can’t measure, you can’t improve. So, keep trying until you finally succeed. You never Fail; you either Win or you Learn.

“Antonym of success?”

Ask this again to yourself, not the search engine. Did your mind say ‘Learning!!!’

By: Silky Mittal, CA (Director of Finance)

About the author: Silky is an accomplished finance professional with more than 12 years of experience in US & India corporate accounting and taxation. She is an MBA and a Chartered accountant.