Failure is the stepping stone to success: What my first three steps taught me

As you approach any endeavor, there are three likely outcomes. One, you are successful; two, you achieve partial success; three, you are unsuccessful. The outcome is not as important as what you learn from your experience. You don’t learn as much from your success as you do from failures. Success and failure, however both have their benefits. Success gives you the fruits of your efforts and failure gives you the seeds that you can then later transform into success in another form. If you look at success and failure in this manner, one can ask, which is more valuable, a seed or a fruit? A fruit once eaten is done and gone. A seed on the other hand has the potential for turning into a tree that can bear countless fruits.

When I look back on my life over the course of the last decade or so, just as the average person out there, I have had my share of successes and failures. Based on lessons learnt from past failures, I came up with seeds for my future success. These seed are universally applicable to anyone, anywhere. Here are the three stepping stones that helped me find the seeds of success.

Thinking outside the box

In medieval times, some thought the world was flat and others correctly subscribed to the idea of a spherical world. At that time, there was perhaps a lot of speculation about what lay beyond the vast seas. Discovering the new world involved thinking outside the box. The modern world as we know it today would not exist if Christopher Columbus did not think outside the box. Since that time, man has not only discovered and accounted for every square inch of land on earth, but also has landed robotic rovers on the surface of our neighbouring planet, Mars. Every innovation that has translated into the everyday conveniences of modern life, such as cellphones and microwaves, that we take for granted, is the result of someone thinking outside the box. A lot of people have great ideas, but only a few actually take the leap of faith to turn an idea into something that is tangible and useful. 

Work-life balance

Tim woke up to a gentle morning breeze. The weather was perfect and the early morning air drafting in through the large bay windows facing the Pacific Ocean felt like a cool mist in his face. As he moved towards the curtains flapping in the breeze, the first hint of the rising sun just over the eastern horizon glinted off the azure blue waters given it an ethereal golden sheen. The only sign of a restless wind was a couple of whitecaps out in the distance. As he watched sailboats slowly move across the waters, Tim’s work life was a distant memory although he had just arrived on this Pacific island paradise. Watching the waves gently lap the picturesque and nearly deserted sandy beach, his mind was similarly tranquil. The only sounds were those of seagulls and other avian life that made this particular beach home. He was snapped out of his early morning reverie by the humming sound of a motor in the distance. A tractor with a large net was clearing the beach sand of sea weed that was brought in by the ocean current overnight. As the sound got louder and louder, Tim was startled to find himself in his cubicle, one among several hundred similarly sized cubicles spread across an endless expanse of floor space. The only hint of the sun in his windowless cubicle was an old frayed piece of paper with a rough rendering of the sun above a couple of mountain peaks drawn by his young daughter in her art class a couple of years ago. The janitor slowly sweeping across the aisle with his industrial vacuum cleaner just before the 8 AM influx of hundreds of office staff, reminded Tim that was already three hours into his 16 hour work day. One would think that as he was taking a long anticipated and much needed vacation two weeks hence, he was at his desk very early to get all his work done. However, with the ever increasing demands of his high pressured job, not the least of which was his boss snapping at his heels and barking orders every time he passed through Tim’s section of the office floor made Tim an office rat glued to his seat. A relaxing vacation was a distant dream. Needless to say, Tim had no work-life balance.

The sophisticated beggar

The word ‘beggar’ conjures up images of destitute people in dire straits looking for the very basic necessities of life such as food and shelter. If you look at the wants of a person in this unfortunate position, it is in direct correlation with that individuals needs. For the more fortunate rest of us, we have the ability to meet the basic needs of life without putting much thought into it. Food is the basic necessity of a poor man and gasoline is the basic necessity of a rich man. However, what we have in common with a ‘beggar’ is our needs and wants in life. The only difference is the degree of correlation between our needs and wants. Most of our wants are on a mental level. For a person in desperate search for food such as what we see in TV images from the poorest parts of the world and for someone on a diet, the common theme is hunger. In the former case, hunger results from need for food that is not easily available. In the latter case, hunger results from the need to stay away from food that is easily available. There are no right or wrongs here, only differing perceptions. All are born equal. Feeling rich or poor depends on how you perceive life on a mental plane. The more you want something, the more have to beg in the inner silence of your mind. This in turn makes you mentally poor. Recently, when asked about his net worth, Donald Trump said, “I am worth whatever I feel”. If you feel that you don’t lack anything and feel well equipped to deal with life whatever maybe your circumstance, mentally you are a very rich person. If you always think that you are as well equipped physically and mentally as anyone else in the world, there is no reason you cannot achieve what you set out to do. Most humans can function adequately with one eye, one ear and one kidney, we should consider ourselves lucky to be born with the gift of a pair of eyes, ears and kidneys. We have a spare just in case one goes bad. So, why feel that you were born with limited resources.

The Inner Rainbow

Based on a talk given at the Dattoli Cancer Center, Sarasota, Florida. April 12, 2011

Remember the clear light, the pure clear white light from which everything in the universe comes, to which everything in the universe returns; the original nature of your own mind. The natural state of the universe unmanifest. Let go into the clear light, trust it, merge with it. It is your own true nature, it is home.

- Tibetan Book of the Dead

This succinct description of the mind helps us go back to basics and helps us find our roots whenever we are troubled by thought forms which can be infinite in variety. When you close your eyes, you may see a million different thoughts pass through your mind’s eye. If you are able to “turn” around and back project all these thought forms, the mind may appear as a tiny dot of white light. Imagine a cone of light coming from a spot very deep within your brain that carries with it thoughts. Thoughts appear like the intermingling of tumbling dust particles that show up when the afternoon sun peeks through a window into a dark room. As this cone of thoughts, lit up by your mental energy, dissipates away from its source it starts to form mental images that we see with our eyes closed.

Focusing on one's duty

Dave, a business owner, manages a lot of people. He faces a rather common scenario that most managers face. How do you react when people don’t perform their tasks in a manner that meets your expectations? Do you take them to task and have them do the job your way? Or do you remain passive and hope that things eventually work out the way you envisioned it without hurting the other person’s feelings? In either case, nobody wins. In the former scenario, you as the manager may feel that you have done your job, but have failed to recognize the short and long term collateral damage respectively in the form of hurting others feelings and eventual loss of productivity due to building resentment. When you remain passive and hope things will eventually work out, you fail in your duty as a manager and more importantly you may not be a positive influence by empowering people to develop the wrong work ethic.

The real answer to this question is changing the work culture. People frequently say that change trickles down from the top and does not rise up from the bottom. This serves as a convenient excuse for people at the bottom to continue in their set ways. If people at the top don’t make a conscious effort to change the status quo, whether good or bad is maintained. The top and bottom are relative concepts. If you visualize yourself at the center of a wheel that is turning, as the wheel turns a point at the top of the wheel eventually becomes a point at the bottom of the wheel and conversely, a point at the bottom of the wheel has a chance to rise to the top. At the center of the wheel that is turning, the top and the bottom of the wheel are relative concepts.

Role of the mind in context of thought and consciousness

In a previous post "Thought = Matter x (Consciousness). Part 2: The role of the mind”, I described the mind and our interaction with it. Let’s further explore the role of the mind in the context of thoughts, experiences and consciousness.

When we look at the world outside, we interact with the outer world through the medium of the five senses. There is an inner world as well. We interact with the inner world through the medium of the mind. The mind also is a meeting point for thoughts, impressions and memories from the inner realm and the impressions derived from our interaction with the world outside. The various components of our inner architecture that help create impressions that we see in the mind include thought, stored experiences from the outer world, dreams and memories.