WHAT MAKES THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SUCCESS AND FAILURE IN LIFE? What makes the difference? Curiosity, Passion, Relationship Building Moderation Curiosity is the burning desire to experiment and explore new things. It contributes to success in two ways. First it helps us identify our inner strengths and energies and to discover opportunities to exploit our full potential. Second, it helps us strike new paths that change our lives, lift us from the rags to the riches, from boredom to excitement. This is demonstrated by Aristotle Onassis’ life. When he set out from the coast of Asian Minor for Argentina in 1922, his life was in ruins. He knew very well the difference between living in riches and living in rags. The war had taken away his home, his family’s business, and his freedom. Argentina was the way out of the rags and return to riches. But the path wasn’t well carved and nicely paved. It took a great deal experimentation and exploration to find his way from a telephone operator, striving to learn a new language to the world’s most renowned tycoon. Passion is Eros or Love, in a broad sense, for the objects of desire that helps us pull all of our strengths and energies together towards the acquisition of these objects. Henry Ford, the founder of Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) had a strong passion for cars; George Eastman, the founder of Eastman Kodak had a passion for cameras; Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, had a passion for computer software; and Apple’s Steve Jobs had a passion for both computer software and hardware. Love for the things we pursue has a total-power toward achieving them, provided that it is balanced with self-control and justice, the base of good relations with others. As Plato puts it in the Symposium, “So Love as a whole has great and mighty-or rather total-power, when you put all this together. But it is Love whose nature is expressed in good actions, marked by self-control and justice at the human and divine level, which has the greatest power and is the source of all our happiness. It enables us to associate, and be friends, with each other and with the gods, our superiors.” Relationship Building is the development of friendships and partnerships that help us pursue our goals, providing knowledge and expertise and moral support. At school, friends can provide the moral and psychological support to endure and overcome the pressure that comes with class lectures, homework, exams, and term paper deadlines. Partners provide the information and expertise to go over complex concepts and to complete coursework projects, sharing of class notes, participating in discussion groups. At work, friends provide the moral and psychological support to endure and overcome workplace-related stress, meet project deadlines, handle customer complaints, and deal with internal politics. Partners provide skills and expertise to complete complex projects that require cooperation among several parties. Friendship and partnership are traits shared by many successful company founders, including HP founders Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and Microsoft founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Moderation is the avoiding of excesses, the greed that may destroy a successful career, and become a source of misery and suffering, as it has been extensively argued by ancient Greek thinkers who viewed moderation as nothing less than a solution to life’s riddle. The idea of avoiding the many opportunities for excess was a prime ingredient in a life properly lived, as summarized in Solon’s prescription “Nothing in Excess” (6th Century B.C.). The Greeks fully grasped the high costs of passionate excess. They correctly understood that when people violate the limits of a reasonable mean, they pay penalties ranging from countervailing frustrations to utter catastrophe. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- JEESON AND COMPANY CHARTERED ACCOUNTANTS SECOND FLOOR, U BROTHERS BUILDINGS GURUVAYOOR ROAD, KUNNAMKULAM THRISSUR DISTRICT, KERALA – 680 503 Web Site: jeeson, jeeson.ca ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted on: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 04:38:30 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015