“A dream doesn’t become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work.” –Colin Powell

Hard work means putting 100% effort for your passion and when that passion converts into success it can either means that your stars have been with you or extraordinary effort has been shown by the person.

Success is the mutual intersection between hard work and luck. Hard work puts cause and effect into motion. Once you have experienced the effects and rewards of hard work, luck willingly climbs aboard.

Give 110% effort for your work and luck will follow your hard work and don’t wait for the opportunities to knock in life, think and think and convert those opportunities into success stories.

People measure success with money which is a misconception. Success is something which makes you more responsible towards society and work for the well being of people. To serve more and more human beings is the real success. Success is mental peace.  A person with great peace of mind, willpower and self –discipline is the real fighter and a leader.

In today’s world success is not defined by a person’s wealth but how happy he/she is. Happiness brings you more wealth and creates positive energy around you.

The thing to remember is that between hard work and luck, you can control only one. But if you want to change your destiny start working hard.

Mantras to become successful:

1. Hard work

Malcolm Gladwell argues in his book, Outliers that if someone spends 10,000 hours towards any activity, then he can become a world-class expert in it.  Or in other words, 10,000 hours of hard work is required to be extremely successful. And I am sure he is correct. No success is achieved without hard work or sweat. 

2. Luck

This is the favorite one! Whenever we look at successful people, we call them ‘lucky!’ But what is luck? Is it just a chance, a good fortune? If yes, then how do people get repeated successes? If I were to say that luck is important too, then I would define luck as a confluence of perseverance, prospects and preference. However, a close look reveals that only those people who persevere to look for prospective opportunities to exploit become lucky.

Success = Hard work x Luck

3. Focus and Dedication

Hard work without focus leads to only a sinusoidal performance curve with lots of peaks and valleys. It doesn’t yield a consistently improving performance. So focus and dedication should be the key to success.

4. Secret Ingredient to Success

All the above mentioned things are required for success but they are not sufficient. There is one secret ingredient to the gravy that brings flavor to the complete dish and makes it yummy! And that ingredient is INNER DRIVE. Every individual has at least one strong Inner Drive. And then they have many external drives.

The individuals for whom the external drive syncs well with the true inner drive, achieving success becomes a reality. The unfortunate part is that most ordinary folks spend their whole life without realizing their true inner drive.

What is this Inner Drive??

We often use words like Passion, Obsession, and Mania to talk about Inner Drive. I chose to call this yearning as INNER DRIVE, to clearly differentiate it from the external drivers. For some people this inner drive is to connect with other people, for others it is money. For some it is knowledge, and for others it is relationships. For some it is leadership, and for others it is creation.

Those who understand their inner drive and live their life with a yearning to fulfill it, become super successful. You can look at any successful person and you will see a very strong inner drive which led to his success. Be it Mother Teresa to help the needy, or Mahatma Gandhi to strive for truth and fairness. There are even examples of successful people who didn’t achieve stardom till they stumble upon their inner drive.

     Success doesn’t only mean material success. It is true happiness.

By: Prashant Surana