As you might know, success never comes easy and quick. It comes with hard work, pain, obstacles, failures and much more. It looks always challenging when one starts working on his or her dreams. Most of the times, it gets hard going further, to the extent that one starts thinking of giving up. Sometimes, it is because every next step on the path of success is by nature harder to take than the previous one. Sometimes, circumstances do not allow one to keep chasing his or her dream till the end. Sometimes, disappointments are so huge that it becomes difficult to keep one’s morale high. There could be myriads of reasons, unique to everyone’s own situation, but history vouches for the fact that no one gets success simply on a platter. Who, then, are those who have ultimately succeeded and changed the course of their own lives, if not the history of humankind?
These are the people who painstakingly develop a never-say-die attitude. One can achieve success only if he or she has a ‘never give-up’ attitude which helps one to dispel every shred of negative thoughts that do come to the mind at the time of setbacks. ‘Never give-up’ means believing in yourself and trying one more time when you feel like quitting whenever you are facing failure.
There is an inspiring story of John A. Roebling. In 1883, the creative engineer was inspired by an idea to build a spectacular bridge connecting New York with the Long Island. Nobody had tried it before as experts all over the world thought that this was an impossible feat. Roebling did not give up. He convinced his son Washington, a civil engineer, that the bridge could in fact be built. Working together for the first time, the duo of father and son took the wild challenge and developed concepts of how the bridge could be accomplished and how the obstacles could be overcome. The project started well. Within a few months, however, a terrible accident on the site took life of John A. Roebling and left his son injured with brain damage. As a result, he was not able to talk or walk or even move. All he could do was move one finger. Still, Washington did not give up. He kept the fire of his father’s, and now his, dream burning. He developed a code of communication with his wife through touching her arm with that finger. For 13 years, Washington tapped out his instructions with his finger on his wife’s arm, who passed them on to the team of engineers working on the project, till the bridge was finally completed. Today, the spectacular Brooklyn Bridge stands in all its glory as a tribute to the triumph of the two men’s indomitable spirit and determination not to be defeated by circumstances.
Take the example of our very own renowned cricket player Mahendra Singh Dhoni. He worked day in and day out to fight for his passion, overcoming his unfavourable family circumstances, his father’s reluctance toward his growing interest in cricket and his tiring whole-day job as ticket collector in Indian Railways. Even when his dream came true and he was selected for the Team India, he got out for a duck in his very first ODI against Bangladesh and that entire series left him hopeless to the extent that he was facing the scare of being dropped from the team. Dhoni did not give up. He kept trying with a lot of more hard work and dedication, till he scored a massive 148 off 123 in second ODI against Pakistan in next series to finally establish himself as a known and dependable face of the team. Rest, as you know, is history.
So, while obstacles and failures are bound to occur on the path of success, you must never lose the never-say-die attitude. Nobody is born with this attitude. It has to be developed. The key is positive thinking. Do not encourage negative thoughts either within yourself or in others. Failure is not an end; it is only a step towards success. Every failure has its own reasons. Make a sincere attempt to find, analyse and remove them. Never lose yourself in the hardest of times. Your world starts with you and ends with you. Be open to opinions from others but don’t take them seriously if they upset you. Use the patience as power because sometimes things do take time to reach their culmination. Make reacting positively a habit because life is only 20% problem and 80% how we react to it. You react positively in a situation only when you see good in everything. With every positive reaction, your attitude rises. And this is all that matters the most.
With these words, I wish you success in each of your endeavours with lots of positivity.