Through personal experiences I have found that Success is more meaningful if it goes hand in hand with simplicity and humility. Being successful leads to confidence in self but if it is without the humility factor then it is arrogance. Humility does not mean demeaning oneself through actions or words but it is a quiet acceptance of the success achieved.It is also arguably true that it is important to blow your own trumpet to highlight your achevemnets to make others sit up and notice. This is unfortunately a repeated activity as it has a short lifespan. Letting others blow your trumpet makes sure that the sound is carried far and for long.
Humility is often clubbed up with simplicity. Simplicity is a very sujective term. How much simple makes up for the simplicity factor? The President of a country can lead a simple life, so can a commoner but the quantum of simplicity is varied. Let me restrict myself to define simplicity in terms of action and behaviour. In short, simplicity does not mean that one is a simpleton, although the person is very popularly called just that.
Most people have a tendency to ride very very high on the small success that they achieve. I knew a Manager once who was on his first job. He was out canvasing for some courses offered by an Educational Institute with 2 more co-workers, junior in positon than him. They were supposed to stick posters on the walls and hand pamphlets to the passers by. He stood at a little distance and did not participate in the activity at all. The reason was that he was an MBA and it was below his dignity to do something like that. This behaviour earned him a lot of disrespect from his co-workers and a lot of ribbing. Active participation would have had the opposite effect. It made me wonder what they person was thinking about;an educational degree does not gaurantee any respect or responsibility delegation. In fact education contributes to only 15% of the entire success story of life. The rest 85% is just attitude.
In contrast to this, I had an oppurtunity to work under another manager with 10 years of experience who would help carry equipment from one place to another alongside the peons and guards without a thought and go down on his hands and feet to make sure that all the connections are properly made. This characteristic made him one of the most economical person around. Whenever we need to go somewhere, then he would simply load all the equipment in his vechicle and the two of us would set off, sure that we could be able to carry the entire load ourselves if we did not get any help. This fact also made us more reliable and more work got delegated to us by the OEMs. When the people at the OEM level were still grappling with the beginings of Plan B of a project in case of failure of Plan A, we were delegated the entire work by their Regional Head and we successfully executed Plan B in 15 hours.This reflects simplicity of our actions as we were doing the 'menial jobs of peons, porters and guards'. This simplicity reflects our humility because we did not put our professional positions before us and worked just to get the things done without much hassle. Is it really downgrading of self or is it making the people standing around realize the dignity of labour? We have often found people stepping up to us to help us after we have initiated the process.
Being humble is one of the cornerstones of achieving and maintaining your success. Most people make the mistake of thinking that it is easy to push around people who are simple and humble. They dont stop taking advantage of the fact, forgetting one thing that the doer learns the fastest and the best. It expands the bag of experiences further. And ultimately this would help us to push ahead of the crowd.
This journey of life has made me respect these two qualities so much that I never think of even swapping them with any other quality. I wont say that success is complete because achieving one success makes you hungry for yet another success. The process is an ongoing one. There is no greater attraction than a successful person. Humility keeps you popular and Arrogance ultimately alienates you. Is it easy being successful and arrogant - probably yes. Is it easy being successful and humble - definately yes; you just got to try. As I always maintain, your attitude make all the difference.
Humility is often clubbed up with simplicity. Simplicity is a very sujective term. How much simple makes up for the simplicity factor? The President of a country can lead a simple life, so can a commoner but the quantum of simplicity is varied. Let me restrict myself to define simplicity in terms of action and behaviour. In short, simplicity does not mean that one is a simpleton, although the person is very popularly called just that.
Most people have a tendency to ride very very high on the small success that they achieve. I knew a Manager once who was on his first job. He was out canvasing for some courses offered by an Educational Institute with 2 more co-workers, junior in positon than him. They were supposed to stick posters on the walls and hand pamphlets to the passers by. He stood at a little distance and did not participate in the activity at all. The reason was that he was an MBA and it was below his dignity to do something like that. This behaviour earned him a lot of disrespect from his co-workers and a lot of ribbing. Active participation would have had the opposite effect. It made me wonder what they person was thinking about;an educational degree does not gaurantee any respect or responsibility delegation. In fact education contributes to only 15% of the entire success story of life. The rest 85% is just attitude.
In contrast to this, I had an oppurtunity to work under another manager with 10 years of experience who would help carry equipment from one place to another alongside the peons and guards without a thought and go down on his hands and feet to make sure that all the connections are properly made. This characteristic made him one of the most economical person around. Whenever we need to go somewhere, then he would simply load all the equipment in his vechicle and the two of us would set off, sure that we could be able to carry the entire load ourselves if we did not get any help. This fact also made us more reliable and more work got delegated to us by the OEMs. When the people at the OEM level were still grappling with the beginings of Plan B of a project in case of failure of Plan A, we were delegated the entire work by their Regional Head and we successfully executed Plan B in 15 hours.This reflects simplicity of our actions as we were doing the 'menial jobs of peons, porters and guards'. This simplicity reflects our humility because we did not put our professional positions before us and worked just to get the things done without much hassle. Is it really downgrading of self or is it making the people standing around realize the dignity of labour? We have often found people stepping up to us to help us after we have initiated the process.
Being humble is one of the cornerstones of achieving and maintaining your success. Most people make the mistake of thinking that it is easy to push around people who are simple and humble. They dont stop taking advantage of the fact, forgetting one thing that the doer learns the fastest and the best. It expands the bag of experiences further. And ultimately this would help us to push ahead of the crowd.
This journey of life has made me respect these two qualities so much that I never think of even swapping them with any other quality. I wont say that success is complete because achieving one success makes you hungry for yet another success. The process is an ongoing one. There is no greater attraction than a successful person. Humility keeps you popular and Arrogance ultimately alienates you. Is it easy being successful and arrogant - probably yes. Is it easy being successful and humble - definately yes; you just got to try. As I always maintain, your attitude make all the difference.
1 comment:
Yeah... agreed. In fact this one inspired me to pen down my thoughts on Lesson life teaches ..... there is no ceiling on how much you can rise if you follow these simple things on life....
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