The moment it all changed
History is created, stories are written, dependencies change statistics; all based on what happened at “that moment” If you look at the major turning point in your life or any new occurrences in the world most of them are an effect of one instant.
It is that one moment which changes adoring to abhorring, love to lust, winning to losing, respect to dishonour, trust to betrayal. I suppose most of the transitions I have mentioned are not a very pleasant change. Think about it; don’t these changes affect us most? The way you look at life and what it has to offer to us changes when we are negatively impacted most. Positive changes though more than welcome seldom leave any learning for us. We are too busy basking in its glory! Like I read in a book “There is no bigger failure than success”, precisely so, because success fails to teach us anything.
That said; let me confess that I too yearn to win just like you probably. Yet it is inspiring to see how much that one moment of negativity impacts us. How we resolve to achieve what we set out to. At this moment I recall the face of a child left behind in a race. Wiping the flowing nose and overflowing tears, taking on with a fresh resolve and not giving up till the race is won. Fighting to finish and to win!
It is my failure to win over my fat that keeps me going on the war again & again. Thanks to this by now I have the best kept secrets of losing weight and changed my life style inside out. Not that I have yet won the war but every time I fail, there is a resolve to fight harder which keeps me going. The resolve gets stronger based on the feeling of “that moment” of failing up to your goal
While I was writing this blog a friend of mine passed me the speech of J. K Rowling’s address to the passing students of Harvard As luck may have it the topic was “The Fringe benefits of failing” (is it co-incidence?). I would love to quote a line from her impacting talk which goes “You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something,unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default.”
It is that one moment which changes adoring to abhorring, love to lust, winning to losing, respect to dishonour, trust to betrayal. I suppose most of the transitions I have mentioned are not a very pleasant change. Think about it; don’t these changes affect us most? The way you look at life and what it has to offer to us changes when we are negatively impacted most. Positive changes though more than welcome seldom leave any learning for us. We are too busy basking in its glory! Like I read in a book “There is no bigger failure than success”, precisely so, because success fails to teach us anything.
That said; let me confess that I too yearn to win just like you probably. Yet it is inspiring to see how much that one moment of negativity impacts us. How we resolve to achieve what we set out to. At this moment I recall the face of a child left behind in a race. Wiping the flowing nose and overflowing tears, taking on with a fresh resolve and not giving up till the race is won. Fighting to finish and to win!
It is my failure to win over my fat that keeps me going on the war again & again. Thanks to this by now I have the best kept secrets of losing weight and changed my life style inside out. Not that I have yet won the war but every time I fail, there is a resolve to fight harder which keeps me going. The resolve gets stronger based on the feeling of “that moment” of failing up to your goal
While I was writing this blog a friend of mine passed me the speech of J. K Rowling’s address to the passing students of Harvard As luck may have it the topic was “The Fringe benefits of failing” (is it co-incidence?). I would love to quote a line from her impacting talk which goes “You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something,unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default.”
Comments
:)
-Swami Vivekanada
Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
- Winston Churchill
really good
As they say two negatives ( failures )can indeed make a positive...
There are no good about failures nor are they bad about success.. They are just on two extreme sides of the balance.. So hold on to yours ;-)
Praveen..I echo your thoughts exactly
Krishna..I agree that success is the shimmer for which we all work towards..this line of thought is only to look at the "bright" side of failure too..Good or bad ofcourse is relative thing so me not getting in to it!
Thank you very much..:)
Brilliant writing.. enjoy the experience.
Abraham Lincoln's success through failures... :-))
http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/education/failures.htm
A Change usually gets triggered as the effect of single instant but they go their graduated path to get consummated and established…So Changes are usually gradual - that’s the way we’ve been perceiving the meaning. If any change is sudden, it is either exigent or frivolous enough to be sudden. If the sudden change is pleasant, I call it a “windfall” and in case of an unpleasant sudden change, the word is “accident”. And then the effect of these events might bring about some “change” (gradual).
It is that “one moment” which changes adoring to abhorring, love to lust, winning to losing, respect to dishonour, trust to betrayal.Usually the real reason for the change is something that has endured some time. A hammer hits a rock for 99 times without even producing a crack while the 100th hit renders the crack.So sudden changes can again be the result of enduring long changes (subtle or subconscious).
Albeit, Positive changes though more than welcome seldom leave any learning for us, a smart, sensitive and sensible person will be able to learn a great deal. That person knows to appreciate the opportunity (positive change) and cogitates a scheme to make the best out of it, unlike most of us.
Failure is the point where complacence makes inroad into perseverance. This is not a quotable quote from a great book guys .It was an attempt to mint some great words by this profound sophist. Tell me if you liked it ;)
Sucha, Its not your failure as long as you are focused and trying…that’s the attribute of successful people.
In the finale,I would say : “One who has never failed has probably never tried anything”
Sucha, Nice of you to bring these day-to-day “ vicissitudes of life” into light .We all go through these but fail to circumspect, introspect or retrospect about it !
- Subha Mohapatra
Phonenix..I think we think on the same lines!
Subha!
Firsly a BIG thanks for spending time here..and a BIGGEr thanks for your detailed observations on my little thoughts!
"Failure is the point where complacence makes inroad into perseverance. " Great one..thanks a lot..Loved all your meaningful words..will take time to chew on them.
Thanks again!
I was reading ur blog posts and found some of them to be wow.. u write well.. Why don't you popularize it more.. ur posts on ur blog ‘Musings’ took my particular attention as some of them are interesting topics of mine too;
BTW I help out some ex-IIMA guys who with another batch mate run www.rambhai.com where you can post links to your most loved blog-posts. Rambhai was the chaiwala at IIMA and it is a site where users can themselves share links to blog posts etc and other can find and vote on them. The best make it to the homepage!
This way you can reach out to rambhai readers some of whom could become your ardent fans.. who knows.. :)
Cheers,
Thank u!
If we look at most of the well-known successful people, we see they always learn from success and invest the learning for future. That’s the secret they are able to climb the proverbial success ladder fast.
Let’s take the example of our loved cricketer Sachin Tendulkar. Each step of success has taught him to be more humble and responsible for his next endeavors.
So I feel compelled to say that “success” plays more important role in teaching because success teaches us “what to do ” whereas failure teaches us “what not to do”.
Suppose we are put on an unknown island having unknown fruits for us to eat. Out of hunger ,we eat a fruit. If it makes us “feel good”(success) ,we get to know its safe to go ahead with that fruit in future. If it “makes us sick”(failure),we get to know ,we should not eat that fruit further ..but then, we are left with the challenge of trying a plethora of other unknown fruits.
Similarly, world is full of options. We cannot waste much time learning about “what not to do”. It’s better if we could identify the “what to do” options. And success teaches it better. That is why, the people who stumble upon success more often go up fast in life.
...That does not mean failure is the “end of a blind tunnel”. The disadvantages of failure can jolly well be won by perseverance in the face of “Changes”.
Charles Darwin has said :” It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most
intelligent, but the most responsive to change”.
So, Perseverance (“Lage raho” attitude) is the determining factor for success.
Reinforcing the fact,a quote by Albert Eistein says :
It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.
With ordinary talent and extraordinary perseverance, all things are attainable. Compelling evidences from life of many people have proved this many times.
- Subha
We only learn wisdom from failure much more than we learn from our success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what wont and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.
Cheers!
Guess the fine line of success teaching nothing and failure teaching many things is just a fine line... For most its virtual, yet the thorn in flesh!
We often discover what will do, by finding out what wont because most of the time its easy finding out the wrong than the right.
I remember when I was preaparing for CAT/GMAT etc,I could easily eliminate 3 wrong choices out and zeroed in on the left out option.
The problem is ,world is not always few options and to select the right option needs some preternatural clairvoyance.
So all we can be armed with to combat the confusion is perseverance.
Thomas Alva Edison did more than 1000 tests trying to invent the bulb..he had the perseverance through all the failures which brought him success eventually.
I would like to reiterate the words that I hv quoted in my earlier posts:
It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer - Einstein
“One who has never failed has probably never tried anything”
Cheers,
Subha
Subha, I tend to agree with you that success teaches us what to do but more often than not we tend to get complacent and hence do not strive to do the “best” after being successful.
Good to Great is a great management book about the successful CEO’s all over the world (not famous probably) and oen of the Good to Great research study has also confirmed “Nothing fails like success” which is where I quoted from. Ofcourse nothing is sweeter than success but I thought of elaborating the positives of failure too!
I have already admitted the fact in my first post that,
Positive people know the trick to learn from success,unlike most of us..
("us" alludes to general mass..If we all could be so enlightened as to be able to learn immensely from success,earth will become heaven .)
I am not a voracious reader and so not aware of these books and what's quoted inside....I just went ahead jotting down what I felt inside me..and I was thorougly convinced about my feelings when few examples from real life and real people beeped in my mind.
some topics go into an inconclusive discursion..but still,at the end of the day we feel good to have juggled the grey cells...Thanks to the person who broaches the subject ..and that's you :)
Cheers,
Subha
yeah , as u said its failures & mistakes which teach us important lessons in life
people here are more willing to speak about success but when it comes to talking about failure its a shit..is'nt it?
Failure is not a curse and trust me failure touches very few and special people who it believes would someday make it really big in life. failure has a didactic motive that many of us don't belive or rather ignore the fact
it makes us optimistic,hardworking,passionate about our work. it crafts an us with versatile talents,an us with immense will power,an us with noble wisdom,an us with immense patience..failure happens to us so that it can yank the hidden potentials within us that we believed never ever existed within us
another thing i would like to say is failure is just a way of wavering us from the path of being unhappy....we are so busy setting our goals that we forget to live our lives. we live life for the sake of it...failure teaches us to live life....
last but not the leaste i would like to quote few of my self made proverbs that failure has taught me
"DON"T LIVE WITH LIFE,LET LIFE LIVE WITH YOU"
"LIFE IS ALL ABOUT BEING HAPPY,THE MORE HAPPY YOU ARE THE MORE YOU TRIUMPH OVER IT"
"BEHIND EVERY SUCCESS
THERE’S A SERIES OF FAILURES;
THE MORE THE NUMBER OF FAILURES
THE MORE BOMBASTIC IS THE SUCCESS ACHIEVED.
THIS MY FRIEND IS NOT A CLICHÉ,
BUT A TRUTH.”
thanx alot for bearing my comment frnds
then what is success, that is --------------- i also dont know..
i read dese lines in paulo coelho's book "the warrior of light":
the warrior smiles bcos nuthin frightens him and nuthin holds him. with the confidence of one who knows wat he wants, he opens the door!! ;)