Success and failures

Life has its ups and downs and everybody experiences success and failure. Please fill a form of Life (?) where you tick-- Married, check. Children, check. Career, check. Money, cross. I know it sounds funny but isn’t this what we are actually doing all the time. Very often we have a romanticized idea in our mind as to what our lives should be like, but inevitably, life never ever happens like that. Lord Buddha once said about the future "whatever you think it will be, it will always be something different"! This future is known to the wise as uncertain, unknown and so unpredictable (again funny an astrologer writing this) but what is success and how do we categorize it?  Is it something going by TIMES or FORBES list of 100? Or how many followers you have on ‘Facebook’? Success and failure are terms that do not necessarily call for a universal definition, since every one of us has his/her own definition of what success and failure mean. Generally, a person can be successful in his/ her job, or he/ she can lead a successful personal life, or achieve success in his/ her hobbies. Possible examples of success in professional life could be getting your dream job or receiving a hefty pay raise etc etc . But in a time of a dramatically increasing number of burnout cases, being successful in our job could also mean not being stressed out or burned out. Leading a successful personal life could mean being in a happy relationship or having great friends. Has it ever happened that we achieve something great today but then feel empty afterwards? Many times, we believe we will be happy and ‘successful’ once we find our dream job, or find our soul mate, or acquire ‘x’ amount of bank balance – only to discover (presuming you do achieve!) that after the initial excitement settles, a tremendous emptiness sets in, a feeling of, “Well, now what?”

 In my opinion, the principal rule to determine success is mental strength. How positive a person we are? Optimism or positive thinking can help in becoming successful in any area of life. Life, as in my own limited knowledge and experience, is always changing. Either we are growing forward or falling backwards. There is no constant; there is only change and this is “the law of universe or nature”. Success could be the destination and failure is how you get there. Like, the way we do exercises in gym or yoga class, we must develop and strengthen our mental strength with lots of exercise and now the next question comes-What is ‘mental exercise’? Answer- ‘Meditation’ !!!!