Success and Failure

 One of my colleagues in IRS left the services 6 years ago to join politics.

He has been the most active member of our WhatsApp group and is often called FPM (Future PM).

Before he quit the job (by taking VRS), he and his wife came to me for my opinion. His wife was not happy with his decision as none of their children were settled or married.

I told him that I don’t understand politics and can’t guide him in this regard. However, I warned him politics is very challenging with very low success rate.

However, he was confident that he would succeed as a politician. His confidence was based on his three-time election as president of the IRS (C&IT) association.

He formed his own party, the Uttar Andhra Praja Party, and fought in the 2024 Lok Sabha election from Vishakhapattanam.

Metta was perhaps inspired by a fellow IRS officer, Arvind Kejriwal, who became the CM of Delhi within a very short time of forming the AAP.

Unfortunately, he could get only 326 votes in the 2024 election and placed at 31/34 place.

[1]

I wish him all the best in achieving success in politics, for which he has taken so much risk and is working so hard.

However, you can't become successful just by wishing for it.

It is often said, “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.”

The fact that beggars don't ride horses despite their wish establishes that you can't achieve everything just by wishing or wanting.

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I don’t believe that you can succeed in almost everything if you really want it.

I know for sure that I won’t succeed in many things in life, such as

• Politics: I can’t lie, tolerate the corrupt or criminals, or play casteism or communal card to generate hatred and divide the people.
• Sports: I am a medium-height person, and my body is not suitable for athletics. I also can’t excelll in games like boxing, basketball etc.
• Business: I am very poor at marketing and sales. I can’t pitch for funds for start-ups.
• Celebrity: I can’t become a popular personality like Osho, Acharya Prasant, or Jaggi Vasudev because most of what I say is unpopular and unacceptable to most people.

I believe that I would not succeed in more than 90% of the areas even if I wanted to because of my lack of aptitude in those fields.

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It took me a lot of time and maturity to understand myself and to identify in which fields I could not succeed.

If I am somewhat successful today as a writer, it is because I have discarded most of the fields where I can’t succeed, focused only on a very limited domain, and worked on it for a long time.

I agree with Albert Einstein's famous quote: "It's not that I'm so smart; it's just that I stay with problems longer."

Hence, if you wish to achieve anything of value in your life, identify the things where you can’t succeed despite your best effort so that you can focus all your time and energy on a limited domain to achieve excellence and become hugely successful.

-Awdhesh Singh

Take a moment to look around and Ask this........

Don't Abandon Your Dreams

Source of picture: Google Images

Footnotes

[1] 

Election Commission of India

You must change your habit

 You must change your habit.

• It is foolish to be too frank all the time.
• It is also unwise to help others all the time.

You must rather learn to speak appropriately before people. You must also learn when to keep your mouth shut.

You must help only those people who seek your help or to those who have helped you in the past.

If you are always willing to help others, how can you blame people when they accept your help?

It is like a charitable person blaming the charity for not giving back charity in return of his charity.

While you have a choice to help or not help a person, other people too have the choice to return or not return your favour.

You must get out of the victim's mentality of finding fault in other people’ conduct and learn to accept the responsibility of your own action.

May be other people finds your ‘too frank’ talk stupid, arrogant and lacking substance.

May be you are helping people who don’t need or seek your help; or don’t deserve help from anyone.

Develop the habit of choosing your actions rightly, if you wish to live happily in this world.

-Awdhesh Singh

Regret

Sometime ago, I met one of my colleagues from the IRS who retired two years ago.

He has three children: one son and two daughters. However, none of his children are yet settled or got married.

He was a very honest and efficient officer, so he made no illegal money in his career, though he was posted to many important assignments during his career.

During our conversation, he confided that he often feels that if he had made some money, he would have been better, and his family would not have faced so much financial hardship.

He must be often repenting being honest, and wished that he would made some illegal money.

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I have another batchmate who was very corrupt and made crores of rupees through corruption. He was trapped by the CBI two decades ago, got arrested, and the government confiscated his illegal money.

He was compulsorily retired a few years ago, and the corruption cases are still pending against him. If he is convicted, he might have to spend several years in jail in his old age.

His family suffered so much disgrace and trauma due to corruption, and his financial condition is also very bad now.

He must be feeling jelous of his batchmates who are still in service at high position and must have been repenting of his acts of corruption and wished that he would have lived an honest life.

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There is no formula in life that can ensure you that you will not regret it at the end of your life.

• There are many honest officers in the government who work with honour, live a good family life and their children get well settled.
• There are many corrupt officers in government who are never caught in corruption and lead personal and professional lives.

It all depends on what you define as success.

If you achieve what you aim for in life, you will never repent, whatever path you have followed.

However, if you fail to achieve what you wished for, you will ultimately repent, thinking that if you had done something else, your life would have been better, assuming the best-case scenario.

The fact is that you can’t predict where you would have been on the path you never followed.

The key to living a happy life is to achieve success because nothing succeeds like success.

Swami Vivakandana gave the following formula of success: “Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life – think of it, dream of it, and live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, and every part of your body, be full of that idea and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success."

Hence, it is not as important what decisions you make in your life as how hard you work after making them to ensure that they are right.

If you are successful in your eyes, you will never repent in your life, irrespective of how you lived your life.

-Awdhesh Singh

It is easy to succeed

Source of picture: Google Images

Things not worth anyone's time

 

• Getting into a road rage. Let the other person overtake you. Better to say sorry and return home than try to be a superman and end up in hospital.
• Getting into a long argument. Don’t waste your words and energy when not required. No one will give you a prize for winning an argument.
• Doing something to impress others. Before buying a fancy car, choosing a career or spending extravagantly on social events, ask if you are doing it for yourself or because you want others to know how great you are.
• Checking your mobile phone every now and then to get updates on social media. The fact is that even if you keep your phone aside for a few days, life will go on normally.
• Surrounding oneself with negative people. You’ll become like them in no time.
• Gossiping in office. What you say may come back to haunt you later.
• Engaging in long friendly chats at work. Not only are you wasting your time, you’re disturbing others. The work that is piling up will not disappear on its own.
• Reading tabloid and useless news (sensational, local crime etc) in newspapers or on internet. Spend some time entertaining yourself by reading such news but don’t let it become an addiction.
• Spending a significant amount of time watching television. By regularly watching melodramas, violent-content and programmes where people are shouting/arguing at the top of their voices, you may be also emotionally draining yourself.
• Spending time with time-wasters. If you don’t learn anything or benefit by being in someone’s company or, at least, enjoy the conversation, run away.

-

Rahul Shrivastava, IFS

I use one criterion to judge my happiness or the happiness of any person:

‘How frequently you get angry in your life?’

If you get angry rarely, you are quite happy.

If you are angry most of the time, you are quite unhappy.

Anger and happiness can’t go hand in hand.

Anger is a reflection of our weakness and ignorance.

Anger is truly a gateway to hell. Please read this Zen story.

“I want to know about heaven and hell,” said the samurai. “Do they really exist?” he asked Hakuin.

A tough, brawny samurai once approached a Zen master who was deep in meditation.

Impatient and discourteous, the samurai demanded in his husky voice so accustomed to forceful yelling, “Tell me the nature of heaven and hell.”

The Zen master opened his eyes, looked the samurai in the face, and replied with a certain scorn, “Why should I answer to a shabby, disgusting, despondent slob like you? A worm like you, do you think I should tell you anything? I can’t stand you. Get out of my sight. I have no time for silly questions.”

The samurai could not bear these insults. Consumed by rage, he drew his sword and raised it to sever the master’s head at once.

Looking straight into the samurai’s eyes, the Zen master tenderly declared, “That’s hell.”

The samurai froze. He immediately understood that anger had him in its grip. His mind had just created his own hell—one filled with resentment, hatred, self-defense, and fury. He realized that he was so deep in his torment that he was ready to kill somebody.

The samurai’s eyes filled with tears. Setting his sword aside, he put his palms together and obsequiously bowed in gratitude for this insight.

The Zen master gently acknowledged with a delicate smile, “And that’s heaven.”

You get angry when you feel that you have been wronged.

In all such cases, you pretend innocence and consider other people responsible for your misery.

Such feelings are usually the results of your ignorance of the full facts of the case and your lack of understanding of the functioning of the world.

World has no personal enmity or affinity with you.

Just like the laws of gravity applies to all evenly, the laws of the world applies to all evenly.

The laws are not going to change to suit your whims and fancy, nor is going to be applied leniently because you are ignorant.

Most of the people spoil their lifelong relationship and good work due to their moments of anger.

They often repent their outbursts, but they can never heal the wounds given by them in the fit of anger.

Aristotle said wisely, “Anybody can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody's power and is not easy."

Anger is a sign of weakness.

The angry people are usually not only unhappy, but also unsuccessful in life, because ignorance is neither a help for happiness nor for success.

-Awdhesh Singh

Footnotes

[1] 

Heaven and Hell: A Zen Parable on Self-Awareness

Don't be.....

If you desire something which is impossible, you are ensuring lifetime frustration for yourself

If you desire something which is impossible, you are ensuring lifetime frustration for yourself. Let me give you some examples of such desires

1. Want to be another person
2. Want to have a different gender
3. Want to be born from a different parents
4. Want to be born in different country
5. Want to be born in a different religion
6. Want to be younger than what you are

Instead, I would like to advise you to desire what is possible and then follow your desires with all your courage and conviction. If your desires are possible, the same desires can lift you to higher level and give you so much of a joy. You must rather-

1. Imbibe the qualities of a person who you wish you were
2. Imbibe the positive attribute of the other gender without being ashamed of your own gender
3. Become a parent to your children as you wish your parents should have been to you
4. Visit a country of your dream to know the realist. Shift there if you truly love it.
5. Understand the pros and cons of religions and choose the best religion for you
6. Keep growing and keep learning new things in life to keep yourself young and vibrant

Desiring something which you can’t ever fulfill is a waste of time and the greatest source of misery. Please remember these words of ‘Serenity Prayer’ by Reinhold Niebuhr

God grant me the serenity

to accept the things I cannot change;

courage to change the things I can;

and wisdom to know the difference.

-Awdhesh Singh 

People develop their attitude depending upon who they are.

People develop their attitude depending upon who they are.

You choose your attitude from the basket of attitudes for your psychological satisfaction.

Let me explain.

If you are a good student, your attitude for studies will be different than the one who is poor in studies.

If you are poor person, your attitude toward wealth will be different from the one who is rich.

A good student would love studies while a poor one would hate it.

Unless you work hard on your studies and become a good student yourself, there is no way you can develop a positive attitude towards studies.

The most difficult problem, however, is that if you don’t like studies, you would find it difficult to concentrate and work long hours for studies and learn the subject, while a person who like studies can do it effortlessly.

When I was in school, I used to study Mathematics and Physics 10-12 hours a day , because I loved these subjects.

However, when I had to study Chemistry, even one hour seemed like a millennium.

Often, you get no option to leave something aside because you don’t like it.

I thus got the shock of my life when I got just 50/100 marks in grade 12 half-yearly examination.

I realised that I had no option but to study chemistry for getting into engineering because it had as much weightage as Mathematics and Physics.

And then the miracle happened.

It was initially a torture for me to study Chemistry.

However, as I forced myself to learn the subject, I got better at the subject and soon I started liking it.

And when the final results were declared, I got highest marks in Chemistry, better than maths and physics.

This is the hard truth of life.

If you have a negative attitude for something, you can never change it by manipulating your thoughts or reading a million self-help books.

The only way to change your attitude from negative to positive is to start working on the issue and achieve excellence in the chosen field.

-Awdhesh Singh

Once you become excellent at anything, your attitude towards it would naturally become positive.

Let me tell you a story of Mulla Nasruddin first

 Let me tell you a story of Mulla Nasruddin first.

Mulla Nasruddin was dreaming that someone had counted nine gold pieces into his hand, but Mullah insisted that he would not accept less than ten pieces. While he was arguing with the man over one gold piece, he was awakened by a sudden noise in the street.

Seeing that his hand was empty, Mulla Nasruddin quickly closed his eyes, extended his hand as if he was ready to receive, and said—‘Very well, my friend, have it your way. Give me nine.’

Thinking and dreaming are extremely addictive because they provide you instant gratification as

• You can do anything in your thoughts
• You can be anything in your thoughts
• You can defeat anyone in your thoughts
• You can blame anyone in your thoughts

While you may not be able to win even an election of your small housing society, you can still dream to become a PM or a President of your country.

The moment a dreamer opens his eyes and face the reality, he feels depressed because the reality looks so barren and unattractive to him.

Hence, he again closes his eyes to the Surreality and go back to the world of his dream where he can have whatever he wants.

The remedy for overthinking is to give wings to your thoughts in the real world.

Get going with your thoughts by translating them to actions.

There may be failures in the real actions, which you don’t face in your dreams, but there are real glories and lasting achievements in the real world when you act.

When you start acting on your thoughts, you would soon be able to get the real gold coins in the world which shall never vanish even when you open your eyes.

Let your thoughts and actions get aligned with each other.

Let them become partners and friends to each other so that they start complementing each other and cheer each other to their respective glory.

-Awdhesh Singh

Salary in IT after 20 Years

It really depends on lot of factors. I will mention worst and best cases where salary can go. But before doing so let’s revisit what are the factors and how they can impact career growth.

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• Efforts: Does not matter whether you are IITian or Tier-3 guy. You have to be extremely hard working person to grow in IT career. It’s not like got job and now life is settled. Continue efforts for learning new things outside job can make wonders in long term. That’s where stories like “from 30k per month to 5L per month happens”
• Proactiveness: One has to go over and beyond when it comes to office work. You should own the work instead of assuming it as burden. If you are proactive and go beyond your responsibilities, there are higher chances that you will get promoted.
• Regular switch: This may be controversial but if you are not having background like IIT or some FAANG company on your resume only way to grow exponentially is to change companies on regular basis. Sure there might be good companies who provide really good internal hikes but if your starting point itself is low , hike won’t add much value. Remember 5% on 50L is much better than 12% on 10L.
• League Of companies: Lot of non IT or even seasoned IT people think they have to learn some hot skills to earn more. But it’s far from truth. I saw some guys are ridiculing QA guys as if they are clerk. Let me tell you one thing, QA in google earns far more than so called talented Devs in TCS and Infosys. If there is single most factor which decide salary then it has to be kind company you are working in. Hence it is extremely important to be in right company.

Now having all context set here are the figures based on my judgement.

• If you take absolute worst and best case, in worst case someone may not able to even get a job if get fired and is not skilled enough to get another job. So worst case is 0 salary. On other hand there is literally no upper limit for highest salary. Someone can become CEO of top product company if he/she has those skills and climbed ladder with right effort in right direction.
• I am sure we are disappointed with first point and wanted something more realistic. Well if some one start with service companies like TCS, Infosys etc and never change company he mostly will reach at around 25–30L ish CTC after 20 years. If some one proactively kept on changing companies and joins FAANG or hot startups he may reach to even 5cr of CTC.

Note: Answer is written with context of software career within India.

-Santosh Kadam

Low Income Family?

Path of Education can also be very Beautiful