Hard work and self-belief

People who have become successful, have different definitions of being successful, which are all correct in their perspectives. However, in my opinion, success doesn’t have any proper definition, or it cannot be defined. What some people might see as success might not be seen by other people as a successful person or a career.

However, what matters is what a person himself wants to do. That is, one’s success is determined by no other, but them. Some people think that they are capable of doing anything, and some think that they can’t do anything or they are incapable of doing anything. That is just the wrong approach of theirs, which we discussed in a few articles earlier.

So, if you want to see yourself successful, then learn to define your success in your way. No other person can truly understand and analyse you, to define your success or determine whether you are successful or not is just not possible for them. They’ll make their own opinions about whether you are successful or not. Such a case can’t be helped because you simply can’t stop people’s thoughts.

But, there’s a set of rules that one needs to follow to become successful. These very rules are what really people look at, and if they are not seen then they consider you as unsuccessful or lethargic. But, if you know that you are following these rules yourself: to achieve your goal, to become successful; then you are truly on the right path to being successful.

You see, some efforts are just not seen by the other people around. They see it but seem to ignore it and consider it useless or worthless. Again, it can’t be helped because you cannot be explaining yourself to every one of the ones who are trying to judge your success status—that’s simply not physically possible.

Enough talk about people’s thoughts and opinions. Now let’s get right back to the topic of self-belief and hard work. To understand this, imagine a person trying to walk. To reach a particular destination, people alternate between their feet until they reach their destination, that’s simply what walking is.

Now, imagine that one foot is the person’s hard work, and the other foot is their self-belief or their belief in their capabilities and potential. If you think about it, if one just relies on either of them, they wouldn’t be getting anywhere because it is a lot harder to walk on one foot than to walk on two, right?

Let’s say that we have a very hardworking person, who works hard all day and night to get into a position better than they are now. They try all sorts of things that they can do, but nothing works because their focus and attention which were meant to be at one point are averted at various other activities, which does not seem to take them anywhere. Think of it this way, you can’t aim at ten different things kept at ten different locations with just one bullet. You will either need to use ten bullets or you will have to master the technique of deflecting the shot of just one bullet to ten different places. The first part cannot be possible since we just have one mind and we can’t focus on ten different things at the same time. The second part can be possible since learning to manage time to distribute focus on everything is an art, which only a few can master. So, only if you focus on one thing at a time, you will be able to get to a better position. Hence, working hard in all possible ways should not be done and we must fix one goal, one aims for ourselves to achieve, and then build layers of other goals on top of that to reach the height of success.

Next up, is believing in ourselves. Since we are focusing on one thing at a time, we should also know that we should choose only what is in our capability. Our capability is something, that should neither be ignored nor should it be overestimated. There should neither be a waste of potential, nor exploitation of it. So, we must judge ourselves based on our capabilities, and then use our capabilities to get to a better position. So, believing in ourselves is just as important as working hard.

Also, going back to the walking example, if we use the other foot, just self-belief, then it is again going to be harder for us to become successful because again it is like walking with just one foot. Just like to walk effectively and properly, one needs to use both feet simultaneously for a proper sense of direction and proper distribution of effort among the two feet; we must also learn to reach the path of success, one must learn to distribute his hard work and self-belief equally and then reach the path of success. Walking with one foot, or just believing in ourselves and not working hard will just make us tremble and fall. So, we must learn to admire our potential, and also work hard to use the potential to its fullest.