The Shackles of success

The Shackles of Success

"If the only tool you have is a hammer, you will see every problem as a nail."

I read it a while back, it appealed to me instantly, & recently I read it again, this time with a different mindset, different condition & surely a different point of view.

I had successfully nailed a plank & now I had a new, different plank. A different kind of nail that has to be tackled in a completely different way. Yet I saw myself trying to take the same approach. Why? Because I had the same hammer, a similar appearing problem & a lot of people to remind me how good I am at nailing the planks. How beautifully I nailed it back & what good odds I have to nail it again.

Then I look around if I am the only one of my kind & can I learn from those around me. Yes I have learnt from them, I have learnt from all of them.They exhibit a pattern; unknowingly but quite convincingly .I have seen people working with old methods as those methods worked in the past & they think that they will work in present too. Just because we were successful at something we started assuming that next thing will be similar.

We will deploy similar thinking, strategies, methods, processes & zap, we will taste the success again.

I fought so hard against it, just to find that this fight‘s not gonna end. Whenever you taste success you feel good, people around you make you feel good & then a fear grips you. Fear to fail, fear to be rejected. You feel the chill & then you start doing things to remain successful. The fire to try anything to be successful gets replaced by the fear & insecurity of keep doing same things to remain successful. Repetition replaces creativity, Chaos got replaced by order, Hunger got lost by processes.

Then one day someone comes whose methods are unorthodox, different.We reject him. We fight against him just to realize that we are again assuming. We still think that we are fighting the same old fight with same old methods for same old win. Unaware of the fact that this time we are destined to lose it.

Then we complain. We blame, we curse fate, circumstances, knowledge, and people around us.

"If I would have taken that one step, if I would have done it differently. I would have won". We try to find something missing outside whereas actually it was always missing inside.

What we did not see is that we lost this battle that very day, when we chose the safer, surer, tried & tested old method to retain our reputation to be successful. We lost it right there, right then. It was merely a matter of time after that.

For me nothing ever went according to the plan. It’s not that I am a ridiculous planner or the planning is such wastage of time for me. I always plan for things, for future, for success, for improvement. But I guess it’s a way of gods to teach me not to rely too much on the plan. Almost always I needed to divert from the plan & infuse some agility in the plan. After a while I understood that best plan is not the one which covers it all, on the contrary best plan is the one which can be changed. Planning is not the ability to apply same solution to new problem; it is the art of modifying the already worked solution for the new problem. Yes, it’s not easy but its beautiful.

Don’t take me wrong. Planning is the most important thing one needs to do before jumping to action. I know it does not cover it all but it gives you a picture of the problem. It makes you aware of the options, the possibilities you have. It helps to take a decision when the hour of need comes. Plan to the brim, it’s important but what’s more important is to understand that planning does not stop when action begins; in fact it gets intensified with time. Once you being the action, you don’t have the leisure of taking time, it got to be fast, every plan no matter how subtle, how sharp, how sure or impressive has to be adapted when the action starts.

What we do wrong is to assume that if a plan has worked in past then it will keep on working in future too.

It’s a dangerous mistake to make. Fight against it as this fight is not to make a reason fail but make it fail every single time it encounters you. This fight won’t end but it will yield what we cares for most, SUCCESS.

 Arpit