Success is a hard earned cookie which tastes very sweet but if consumed incessantly can spoil your wisdom tooth and humility is like salt which adds the right flavour to success and without it everything goes tasteless. Peeking into our own lives, each one of us has to endure unique struggles in life. Anything worthwhile we want to achieve; is a journey, which goes hand in hand with tough times. Otherwise there is no zeal to achieve success. With every passing hurdle we are supposed to grow as a person, draw correct lessons & thus enrich our life with the so called wisdom borne out of these experiences. If we miss out on picking up these lessons from each passing difficulty, sine qua non to success, it is not worth achieving. In other words, it’s an empty victory.Being successful bestows pride, respect, appraisal and social acceptance but if a successful person is not humble enough to handle these sweet fruits of success/victory, he loses all at once in his arrogance and plasticity.
Humility is like green grass that runs on every inch of green gardens. People visiting gardens make notice of blossoming colourful flowers, which are here reminiscent of real life success and later achievements. Nobody notices the soft refreshing grass they walked over. Try imagining a garden with most amazing flowers, tall trees but without grass; is it appealing?? Don’t you feel something very important is missing & that is what I refer to here as humility. Success must bestow humility or there is no real value of success, neither for self nor for others. Humility is not just being polite and responsible, it is an intrinsic self- worth in which an individual experiences ultimate insight which is free from vexations, and illusion of self- deception.
Too many times, we define success as merely opposite of failure and fear of this word ‘failure’ begets greed, competition and anger. In its essence success cannot be restricted to winning some race but rather it’s about achieving the best in ourselves & our significant others with right attitude. The attitude of a person is important since it measures the altitude of his success. The world is viewed differently by everyone, and it is an individual’s perception that governs his ambition and the way he views opportunities. Success, and by implication happiness, is not determined by how much you earn or your station in life. Success is determined by, whether or not you achieve, your chosen goal in life. What turns goal and dreams, and even limited objectives, into real life success are attitude one brings to the work of living and doing. If you have an attitude that is appropriate to your objective, success is assured and it must follow the former to sustain winning. This is an ongoing exercise throughout life. One must regularly reflect on one’s attitude and activity, assess them from the standpoint of success, and make changes where necessary.
When we are struggling to approach our goal (ego/ mastery goals), we expect people to be humble and kind, then why can’t we return the same when we reach the zenith and help budding talents. Often the lust for success clouds our vision and we become mean. Think of our own good, will act in a self-centred way and sometimes act or say something that was not meant to be done or said. God has given us a golden pen and a golden tongue. We overuse our tongue and instead of expressing humility, humiliate others. Being humble is the right cleaner that makes the glass crystal clear and we can see through the window the very same path of achieving success, travelled by ourselves. This reminds us of all hardships faced in the journey to the top. Being humble and extending a hand to those who are still in midway works like icing on the recipe of success.
Lao-Tzu said “I have three precious things which I hold fast and prize. The first is gentleness; the second frugality; the third is humility, which keeps me from putting myself before others. Be gentle and you can be bold; be frugal and you can be liberal; avoid putting yourself before others and you can become a leader among men.” This makes you wanting and tempting even more than previous times. You literally grow as a person. Being humble just takes welcoming gestures and good attitude when you have all you wanted. Liberty to hold success is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others and the only way of sharing is being modest.
“We come nearest to the great when we are great in humility.”
_Rabindranath Tagore
References:
Batra Pramod, Batra Vijay, 2002, New Management Thoughts, Forward by Nikhil Nanda .
Publisher : Full Circle.
Google; Wikipedia