Degrees of Happiness

It's 24 degrees Celsius outside and I'm totally enjoying it.
No heavy jackets, wool caps, heavy snow boots! Heck, not even that stupid sweater!
Time for cricket, walks, jogs, barbecues and shorts.


Yipee!

Necessary But Not Sufficient

If you're careful enough, nothing bad or good will ever happen to you.

~Ashleigh Brilliant

Courage is the price life exacts for peace.

~Amelia Earhart




Sometime back, (come to think of it, a long time back.... but then, as DA said, time is an illusion; lunchtime doubly so)I was chatting with Aai & Baba (over cups of piping hot tea) about how all things general. One of my close acquaintances recently had a great new job opportunity - and was now able to do something she wanted to do for all her life. It was great to hear about that. She was now in the U.S. for about 5 years and things were looking good. My dad remarked about how it had been a very difficult decision for her to leave the well settled life and leave to pursue her idea of success. It was a uncertain future for her back then. But it had paid off.

What is the most essential ingredient to 'success'? What is that one thing which differentiates the successful* from the ordinary? What do you mean by success anyway?

After little pottering around with those thoughts (and obviously with nothing better to do - what with the depressing snow et al.) I've an observation and a conclusion:

The basic fact of life is that we all prefer to stay right in our comfort zones. And that's where it all goes wrong.

All of us face problems. Different ones at different times, but we all face them. They may be palpable ones - ones that have been defined for us - or ones which we seek or need to define ourselves.

Quite often in life we prefer not to deal with our problems/hurdles, simply because we are afraid of failure. We are scared that we may fail, thereby not to achieving what we set out to do. Many of us, I'm afraid, wonder "what people would think". We seem to almost lie in waiting, waiting for that moment when the problem would pass away; after all it would be so much easier.

But somehow we don't seem to realize, that it is by denying action on those problems that we actually end up failing.

Ironically then, we fail because we are afraid of failure.

I'm sure that there comes a time in everybody's life, a moment of realization,when you can see that if you don't act you will definitely fail. This is usually a breaking point. It is a point where the person is stretched to his/her limits. It is then the character of the person which decides how he or she will react. Some will break down and accept failure. Others will fight all odds/act on it. Remember though, in all cases success comes only to those who get out of that comfort zone.

That said however, getting out of the comfort zone is a necessary but not sufficient condition for 'success'.
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* I won't waste my time defining success here. Take it as whatever you think it is. It _is_ basically what you think it is ;-). But there's definitely more to say. It deserves another post though.
**Don't you scoff at that. If you don't believe me, try searching for 'success' in wikipedia. You'll be redirected to an article on (surprise, surprise) social status. Now that says a lot doesn't it?