Secrets of Success

The Secret of Success




One out of three In India is living below the poverty line. And their number is steadily increasing. At the time of Independence the percentage was much lower.
This is more or less the pattern in most of the underdeveloped countries.

International agencies, donor nations, the UNO and the NGOs operating in each country, have been extending, from time to time, free medicines, clothes and financial helps to the poor and the downtrodden, to the backward and the sick. There have been efforts too to educate them, to reduce population explosion, empower women and to provide employment opportunities.
But with all these, there are more poor people today than ever before.
Obviously, the efforts have not produced the desired results.
They remain still mostly illiterate, engaged in petty thefts, prostitution or doing menial and odd jobs. There has absolutely been no improvement in their living standards and as mentioned already, their numbers have been steadily increasing.

But

Doesn’t it warrant a review?
The external, material helps do alleviate their hunger a little or remove the disease symptoms or still, help them clothe themselves for the time being. But it does not alter the reality. As soon as the helps stop coming, they return to their previous states.
 Why the efforts at such a massive scale go unproductive?

 Why there is no improvement in their living standards?

→Has It got anything to do with their thoughts, beliefs and attitudes?
→Can external help alter the life of anybody?
Well, if external help could change individuals and societies it would have already become a reality. Aid is coming in such a massive scale. The donor countries, international organizations and the respective governments have all been doing the same for a long time now with no or little result whatsoever.
A close analysis of the poor in each one of the countries concerned reveals that their
Their belief system remains the same.
Their thought patterns do not alter at all.
Their attitude is the same as say centuries before.
And no effort is done to alter their thoughts, beliefs and attitudes.
→MOST OF THEM BELIEVE IN FATE OR KARMA OR NO-SOLUTION-INEVITABILITY.
They feel they are destined to suffer and that without external help they are doomed. There is also a prevailing notion that it is the duty of the society and the government to uplift them.
Have their backwardness and poverty anything to do with their thought patterns?
Yes, it is possible.
Just what are their thought-patterns?
 They think almost always about poverty, wants and sickness.

 They fear about what they will eat and what they will put on tomorrow.

 Where they will sleep.

 How they will get treatment for their frequent illnesses.

Could it be that their thoughts, fears and emotions create their reality?

There seems to be a strong co-relation between the two.
A hunger project study conducted by Wisner Erhard in 1977 has shown that scarcity orientation and victim mentality are at the root of the world hunger. Their thought patterns have been programmed into them through the poverty at home and in their neighborhood. The no-solution-inevitability is built into their brain from the very beginning. As a consequence, they accept their fate passively. In fact they expect nothing else but poverty and suffering. There is no wonder that they do not try to overcome their pathetic state of affairs. The occasional helps they receive merely help to overcome the crippling situation or prolong their existence for the time being.
And as their belief system does not change there will be no effort whatsoever from their part to improve their lot.




Scarcity of food has haunted human societies too. Diseases, epidemics and natural calamities have killed millions of them. A majority of the children born so far in the world, have died before reaching the age of 12. Horrendous plagues have obliterated entire human societies. Of late, new plaques have surfaced and they threaten man’s very existence here. Man’s helplessness must have slowly led him to the belief in Karma or fate. They feel they are helpless victims destined for poverty, diseases and suffering. Naturally they tend to surrender themselves to whatever nature brings.





But they should. Today man is no more at the mercy of nature or its forces.
Medical science has advanced so much that infant mortality rate has drastically come down. Industrial revolution has ensured adequate production of goods and services. Agriculture has developed so much that today we are able to produce more food than is required.
→Now man has become the master of his life.
He has to only challenge the adversities. For this, he has to first believe that he can overcome them if he tries. If he believes he cannot, he will never ever try at all to alter his situation.
Even in the past, those who have challenged their fate and fought against adversities have all come up. Those who dreamt high did progress and succeed.
This is amply demonstrated by the millions of individuals who succeeded in their lives by their own efforts and a number of societies which advanced against all odds.
Let us see some of these societies:
Northern Europe is an excellent example. As their forefathers moved from the comparatively cozy climate of the south and settled in the harsher and cooler regions of the north they had to ward off the ambient cool and work hard to produce the essential necessities of life. There was no ready food as in the African jungles and the ground was not fertile. There was no adequate supply of water and they had to fight with all their might to survive, develop agriculture and industry. This fighting nature ultimately led them to scientific and technological advancement. Later, they conquered distant lands and prospered faster.
They had already started to believe that whatever the human mind can conceive and believe it can achieve.
 Those who inhabited warm climate regions where water (either from rains or rivers) was aplenty and the ground was fertile or where there was a lot of food readily available, progressed –if at all they did –very slowly.

Most of Asia and Africa come under this category.















Who fought back poverty and backwardness have prospered too. Majority of the richest people of the world like Andrew Carnegie, Rockefeller, Henri Ford, Bill Gates, Dhirubahai Ambani, and all started their lives from zero. Most of them were born into poverty.
Andrew Carnegie, the richest man in the world in the 1930s was born in such a poor background that he had to steal apples from a nearby estate just to survive. The owner of the estate eventually came to know of this. One day he set his dogs after little Andrew, the intruder. He ran for his life and when he managed to climb on to the compound wall he declared to that arrogant owner, “When I grow up I will buy this estate of yours.”

Later, he migrated to the United States and started his life as a steel mill worker for lowly wages. He continued there until he fully understood how to make and market steel. Later, he started a mill of his own. He continued there for decades and the rest is history. The Scottish little boy became the richest man of his times.
He bought that estate and many more.
Henri Ford started his life as a mechanic for a meager $2 a month when he was a little more than a boy! (He could not go to school at all.) After years of hard work he was promoted to a foreman’s post and later, with the money he saved the very hard way, he started a small workshop and from there he built up an industrial estate.
Rock feller was a little luckier. He could start with $4 a month! He too worked his way up and became very rich later.
Thomas Alva Edison was labeled an “addled” boy and was sent out of the school. But his poor mother refused to take the teacher’s words and she taught him by herself. By the age of 10 he was selling newspapers to make a living. He started his experiments in a ramshackle shed near his little home.
This is the boy who later patented more than thousands of inventions! How much difficulties and struggles he had to undergo to reach his goals!
But inventions did not come very easy. It was the hard way all through. When he was working on the electric bulb, he failed over 10,000 times.
Edison was trying to identify a material that can withstand heat when electricity is passed through its thin filaments. He ordered various types of materials from around the world and started testing. One test failed, two test failed …hundred tests failed….thousand tests failed….tem thousand tests failed!
His friends and family members asked him,
“Have you gone mad?”
“Well, I know ten thousand things that won’t work. Hence I am nearer to my goal than I ever was,” he replied.
The very next test was success. The Tungsten filament was identified and electric bulb became a reality.
When he tried to identify a plant that could yield latex, he had to do many more tests.
No wonder he said,
“Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety nine percent perspiration.”

Helen Keller was blind, deaf and mute. Just imagine a life where one cannot see, hear or talk! Her teacher, Ann Sullivan had to take her to a river and put her feet in the running water and later, after taking her home, she had to pour a number of buckets of water over her head to make her feel ‘the thing.’ Then she would write “WATER” in Braille system in her palm. Just to learn one word she had to struggle so much. Still, she mastered thousands of words and later wrote so many books and traveled all over the world inspiring the blind, the crippled and the sick .You must read about how this wonderful woman became one of the greatest women ever lived!! You will be amazed at the difficulties she had to encounter all along the way.
Wilma Rudolf was a black child born to illiterate parents. When she was 2 she was afflicted with polio and she lay in a corner of her hut cursing herself. But her mother thought otherwise. She used to tell her, “Wilma you will be able to walk, run and do anything like any other girl.” She repeated her suggestions day after day, month after month, for years.
When Wilma was nine, she told her mother,
“Mother I want to be the world champion.”

Her mother was not surprised.
“In which field”, she asked her.
“In running.”
Just imagine a child who cannot even stand, declaring to her mother that she wants to become the world champion in running. Such were her thoughts!
The very next day she threw away the braces that were kept to straighten her legs. With great difficulty, she tried to stand up but fell down. She tried again. But she fell down d again. Thousands of attempts followed!
It took her almost one year to stand up on her own. With another year’s efforts she could put a step forward then another and so on and she managed to slowly walk! Running was a natural step forward. Immediately, she arranged running competitions with her neighborhood children. But in all such competitions she was the last to finish. It hurt her a lot. She decided then and there to beat them and she started practicing fast. Within a year she ran ahead of all of them. Later, she went to a sports university and she started practice under the famous coach, Ed Temple.
In the 1960 Rome Olympics this polio affected girl won 3 gold medals: in 100m & 200m races and in 400m relay! She thus became the undisputed champion of the world.
Like the others she had thought her way to success.
Milton, the famous poet was blind, Beethoven deaf.
Franklin D. Roosevelt was crippled.
But they all overcame seemingly insurmountable difficulties and triumphed.
Mark English is an extraordinary man. For 22 years he had only one thought, one desire, and one goal—to conquer Everest. Last year (2006) he did it. He became the first person to do so without legs.
Mark had lost his legs in one of his previous attempts to conquer Mount Cook in 1982. Both of them had to be amputated to ensure his survival. No one –even in his wildest dreams—thought that he would be able to climb Everest with his artificial legs. But he did it after 22 years!

Dhirubai Ambani was born as the son of a primary school teacher. He went to Yemen in search of a job. He worked there as a petrol pump attendant and when he made some money he returned to India and became a salesman in selling garments. But his thoughts were that of a king as he walked through the streets of Bombay. He was determined to set up one of the biggest industries of India. Before long he started the Reliance and before he died it was the biggest company of the Indian sub-continent.
K.R. Narayanan was born in abject poverty to illiterate parents in a scheduled tribe. He had no influential relative at all. He had to walk five kilometers up and five down to go to school. He took tuitions to meet the cost of his high school and college education. Still, he studied so nicely that he got scholarship and went for higher studies. His hard work took him to England and once he graduated, he returned to India with a letter of recommendation from his famous professor to Nehru who inducted him into the Indian Foreign service (I.F.S.). He worked efficiently as India’s ambassador in a number of countries and retired as a known man.
After retirement he did not sit idle at home. He joined the congress party and got elected three times to the parliament. He had great ambitions. He was soon inducted into the Union Cabinet. Later Mr. Narayanan was elected unanimously as India’s vice president. After five years, he became the president of the country. And he became one of the ablest presidents ever.
His story illustrates how one can reach the very top from humble beginnings. And of course he is an example to all.
You may bring to your mind any one who really succeeded from your neighborhood. Most probably he would be from an ordinary, if not poor, family.
From the lives of the great people one and all we learn that
Success comes from one’s own efforts regardless of one’s wealth or status at birth. .


Ann Landers says,
“Fighting back is a necessary condition to succeed and surrendering a sure recipe for failure.”
“Trouble and failure are inevitable parts of life. When they come, hold your head high and say, ‘I will defeat you. I will be higher than you’.”



From the lives of all great people and the advanced societies we understand that:
• Strong desires energized with determination and pro-active do bring the desired results.
• Every successful project has always begun as a thought.
• Positive mental energies get converted into success wealth or health.
And that,
Idling and laziness lead one to failure.
Negative energy is totally destructive.

Those who fought back adversities must have spent a lot of physical energy and did a lot of thinking and planning, thus producing a lot of mental energy which got converted into prosperity later.
Those who are poor idle away their time mostly, accepting everything as predetermined or inevitable and do not use their mental energies constructively. They engage themselves in some physical work without any planning and they do not focus their mental energies on a specific goal. Consequently, they end up as paupers or failures.
Everything seems to happen as a result of the trading of energies.
There is abundant energy in the universe and in every individual.
There are plenty of opportunities here too. It is possible for anyone to tap one’s energies, go up and succeed.
∆ Generally, people do not know how much they can accomplish.
They think that only a few are destined for success and that the others are just unlucky.
→If you believe in karma, inevitability or fate, it will make you a hardened believer of this attitude and a victim of that consequently.
You have thus no control on your destiny and you become like a log floating in a river. You go wherever the current takes you and you say ‘that is my fate’
Now is the time for you to control your life and its course.
It is very easy to decide your fate.
∆→But How?
There is only one reality in the universe: ‘Energy.’ And it is this which turns into
all material and mental riches.
It can be transformed into wealth, poverty, health, sickness, fame, frustration, happiness, power or high a level position.
• This earth has abundant energy coming from the sun.
• Every individual has plenty of energy too.
• This available energy can be tapped to get what you want.
If you tap these energies you become successful or else you fail.
And hence, success is largely one’s own making. Fate has nothing to do with it.
There is no luck or ill-luck. What people call ill-luck results from idleness and the absence of fighting back adversities and failures. This truth is contained in the following worse of a famous poet:
“He worked by day
And toiled by night;
He gave up play
And some delight;
Dry books he read,
New things to learn.
And forged ahead, success to earn;
He plodded on with
Faith and pluck
And when he won
Men called it luck.”

All “lucky” people are like this.

The world fails to see the efforts and toil one does before he triumphs.
One makes his own luck and ill luck. No one is doomed to failure.
Luck comes as a result of mental focusing on a target, creating belief and planned hard work until one achieves it. Even for winning a raffle one has to believe he will. I remember a friend of mine who used to buy airport raffle tickets. For this purpose alone he used to pass through the Dubai airport. And he used to fully believe that he will win the jackpot before long. One day when he was sitting in his office he told his secretary you will soon get a call from the Dubai airport. She did get a call before the lunch break.
Mr. Abdul Gafoor, my friend, had won a Mercedes Benz.
Things happen when you believe in them.
THERE HAS BEEN A CONVENTIONAL BELIEF THAT YOU HAVE TO EARN ANY SUCCESS EITHER BY DOING HARD WORK OR BY DOING GOOD ALWAYS AND SO ON.
→This is no more valid. It is all vibrations.
When you believe something in your mind with all your heart and all your soul you will get it. The secret is belief. When you see your goal as already achieved in your thoughts, feelings and emotions it becomes a reality pretty soon.


Have you ever thought of creating your own future, your own destiny?
If you could create your own dreams instead of just accepting whatever Fate is dishing out to you!
Wealth, fame, happiness, health, success are all your birthright. Do not believe anything else. As we will see, every other belief is untrue.
You need not have to live as a failure, as a pauper on a meager income. You need not trudge along at the lowest level of employment. You need not suffer from frequent sicknesses.