Everyone of us reflects on our past life once in a while, and it gives us immense pleasure or a taunting chill. Sometimes, it gives us both, reason being life is just like that- a cobweb of successes and failures, good and bad, highs and lows. This introspection leads us to spare a moment to analyse, categorise and plan our future course of action. Nobody will deny this fact that progress and prosperity are among the few things that everybody would aspire to get as early as possible and in a less laboured manner. Taste of success is an age-old drug that awakens a man to know about his/her abilities and capabilities; true struggle of life being to obtain this drug.
The Almighty created humankind and bestowing it the logic that resulted in different personalities and thinking patterns. This in turn affected the understanding and achievement of success in different ways by different persons. But a common scenario which remains the same to all who have relished success is that it was more of their planned hard-work and less of their belief in the luck factor, the latter being often self-delusion in practice. Excluding very rare exceptions, you will find none saying his/her success came all by itself. There is no shortcut to it, either.
When a set path is envisioned, the journey towards the destination becomes much easier rather than initiating the same in an unplanned and ill-prepared manner. We all must have read or heard about the saying that “one must recall his doings of the day before sleep”. A gist of the day’s happenings should be formulated in mind so that any requiredimprovement is done in the same if felt necessary. This not only relieves one from anxiety regarding what will happen (if this and that thing persists) but also trains oneself to manoeuvre the process or situation effectively, if the same is encountered in future.
On the same lines, a person can gauge his/her success or failures on year-to-year basis. It can be from any month of the year, but the most suitable is when a new year begins since it has a special psychological effect on one’s mind. You may have seen the dawn of 2023 while you are reading these lines and many of us may have already revisited their life in 2022 and planned their future, at least for the new year, resolved to undertake new journeys, finish pending tasks, solve daunting issues, assess the objectives afresh, warm up fragmented relations, work hard to compete in exams, expand the network to secure a suitable job and the like.
An efficacy of some moments in one’s life can change his/her visions, beliefs and ways of perception of things, condition being the person must have a strong will for the same. Success doesn’t come in a plate served if you yourself don’t take any initiative for it. Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the USA, once said “I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it”. Luck favours those who work hard. Dreaming of success will never do the job. It needs to be put on paper and work out the necessary actions required to turn the dream into reality.
Many of us lost our close ones in the year bygone. Their productive and experience-rich lives will always act as a template for us to look upon and face the trials and tribulations of life with much confidence and belief in the All-Powerful, who is Omnipresent and Ar-Rahim. Their loss also reinforced our belief that none is immortal. And what mortal is love, affection and sympathy with one another; it needs to be spread with no bias. In life, it is sometimes better to free ourselves than cling to a thing that is not made for us; it not only saves our precious time, but also rescues us from delusional hope of ultimately achieving or getting the same.
What is gone is gone; the past can’t be brought back to correct the wrongs done and rectify the errors made. It never meant that the year we left behind was not good but yes it was the year that gave us varied reasons to stop procrastinating things and start working on our objectives with renewed motivation and energy; it was the year that gave us motivation to see different perspectives of things/ happenings which in turn provided a rich experience for us to deal with the same effectively and efficiently if needed in future. It also provided us with a neat and clean flow chart regarding the rationale, for what and where it went wrong, and we faced failure in our persuasion of success.
Let’s ponder over the happenings of the 2022 and introspect what must be done to sustain the progress already made, lessen the enmity risen, help more and more needy, shun procrastination, and work together for a prosperous future and stop reliving the downs of the past; hope the year 2023 be the year of improvement in every sphere of our lives; the year of achievements, the year of happiness, the year of vitality, and all that we long for.Let’s us not only hope but also try hard to go according to our plans of success and prosperity which we made after giving proper thought to our weaknesses and ways to remove those deficiencies, let alone wasting our crucial time in sharing HAPPY NEW YEAR messages across our connections without any read. After all, action speaks louder than words.
(Author is a columnist and can be reached at [email protected]