?Courage, Conviction and Persistence
Famous American humorist Erma Louise Bombeck, who achieved great popularity for her newspaper column that described suburban home life from the mid-1960s until the late 1990s wrote - There are people who put their dreams in a little box and say, “Yes I’ve got dreams of course. I’ve got dreams.” Then they put the box away and bring it out once in a while to look in it, and yep, they’re still there. These are great dreams, but they never even get out of the box. It takes an uncommon amount of guts to put your dreams on the line, to hold them up and say, “How good or how bad am I?” That’s where courage comes in. Drivers without dream reach nowhere but then dreams without drivers also don’t arrive at their destination. All of us dream, all of us aspire, but very few of us have the desired courage and enough action oriented to work towards realizing those dreams. It requires not only the action but concerted focussed and persistent action till the goal is achieved. Your inspiration engine should be able to provide power constantly and keep action in motion. The keyword here is consistency not the strength. The thrust of intermittent power won’t work, howsoever powerful that thrust t might be, Speechwriter’s Newsletter mentioned an anecdote about June L. Rokoff, former senior vice President at the Lotus Development Corporation, which she narrated while giving a speech at Bentley College in Waltham, Massachusetts. – “ Ä couple of years ago,” she told the students, “when I was named to the position I have now, my husband David took his collection of my old business cards and had them framed ”She held up the framed cards for all to see and continued, “Here it is – I keep it hanging in my office. When I look at it, I think of two people. “One is my 10th grade math teacher, who told me I should probably give up on math, or any career relating to math, because I was no good in geometry. “The other is a boss I had in my second job, when I was 23 year old. He told me I’d gone about as far as I could go in the computer industry. He said I should just accept the fact that my career had “plateaued “and quit trying to get ahead. “So if any of you see my old math teacher or my old boss, would you let them know that today, I have 1200 people working for me? And, that most of them are very good in math?” Success is not due to some genius or some magic. It is generally due to holding on, failing to let go. You decide to learn a language, to become a singer, to reach a goal in business, to become a better human being. It requires lot of courage, unparalleled belief and conviction in oneself, and tremendous strength to collect you and get up once again after every rejection or failure. Rejection at All India Radio auditions did not deter Amitabh Bachchan, and he grew on to become the most successful star that Hindi Film Industry has seen. This strength and belief helped him to resurrect from the ashes he was left in after he turned bankrupt due to some wrong business decisions. His belief, courage to face the challenge and ability to adopt has given him a super successful second inning in films. Will you succeed or fail? It depends on how much pluck and perseverance you put behind your decision. The decision that nothing can conquer, the grip that nothing can detach bring success. The Chinese have a saying for it : With time and patience, the mulberry leaf becomes satin. “Those who lose riches lose much, but those who lose courage lose all”