In an interview I saw some time back, Abhinav Bindra on being asked
about his gifted talent, said that talent is highly over-rated.
Shooting is 99% luck. He won an Olympic gold. It couldn't have been this
simple.Good shooters must be able to control breath, the millisecond
instability in breath intake can lead to a misfire. There must be many
other issues, which he must have trained hard to perfect. Yet he says
it's luck. May be he was playing to the media, just trying to be
over-modest. The 99% figure is debatable but I have always been a
believer that luck is the single biggest factor in success, more so in
failure.
We often see B-school theories on success coming up. But there can never be a completely correct theory on success. For the simple reason that success is relative. Any theoretical formula for success would include hard work, self-confidence , patience, and few more qualities that is easy to describe on paper but hard to achieve in practice. Luck is often ignored, at best included as an unknown factor. For success, it's best to back your best qualities. People can rely on their hard work, confidence, any other personal quality, but luck? I am not sure how do describe it. I myself do it so often. It takes tremendous amount of courage and preparedness for the worst. Ok, maybe I am over glorifying it. May be it's an escapist approach. It probably, takes an enormous brain folly, intellectual breakdown, vaporization of all senses, common uncommon, to bank on luck, when the stakes are high. Anyone who comes up to me and tell me he would be able to do-this-do-that because , of all things , his luck would favour him, wouldn't earn my respect for sure. At best I'd consider him a fool only, yet to learn the realities of life.(the Hindi superlatives of fool would be so apt, otherwise). Luck is a mistress, might give the sweetest experience, but you can never own her, never rely on her.
Luck hardly finds testimonials by successful. When it comes to failure, luck is the prime culprit. Human tendency is to take the credit for success, but blame others for failure. Luck is an easy scapegoat. Its easy to blame luck. This hypocrisy has a reason. Even the best preparation may not warrant the best performance. Luck can always play the spoilsport. Even the best prepared is not sure of success. Perhaps the inherent 'fear of the unknown' within us is an acknowledegment of importance of luck. A good luck downsizes hard work requirement. No matter how much pride we take in working hard, an easy success is always sweeter. Luck does that. All of us are superstitious to some level, so that so that we can have that little extra from our luck. The sad part, about all this, no matter however hard we may try, we cannot make our luck. Maybe, its God's style of making us realize beyond all reason and development of our limitations as humans.Something we keep forgetting.
"Luck never gives; it only lends." ~Anonymous
We often see B-school theories on success coming up. But there can never be a completely correct theory on success. For the simple reason that success is relative. Any theoretical formula for success would include hard work, self-confidence , patience, and few more qualities that is easy to describe on paper but hard to achieve in practice. Luck is often ignored, at best included as an unknown factor. For success, it's best to back your best qualities. People can rely on their hard work, confidence, any other personal quality, but luck? I am not sure how do describe it. I myself do it so often. It takes tremendous amount of courage and preparedness for the worst. Ok, maybe I am over glorifying it. May be it's an escapist approach. It probably, takes an enormous brain folly, intellectual breakdown, vaporization of all senses, common uncommon, to bank on luck, when the stakes are high. Anyone who comes up to me and tell me he would be able to do-this-do-that because , of all things , his luck would favour him, wouldn't earn my respect for sure. At best I'd consider him a fool only, yet to learn the realities of life.(the Hindi superlatives of fool would be so apt, otherwise). Luck is a mistress, might give the sweetest experience, but you can never own her, never rely on her.
Luck hardly finds testimonials by successful. When it comes to failure, luck is the prime culprit. Human tendency is to take the credit for success, but blame others for failure. Luck is an easy scapegoat. Its easy to blame luck. This hypocrisy has a reason. Even the best preparation may not warrant the best performance. Luck can always play the spoilsport. Even the best prepared is not sure of success. Perhaps the inherent 'fear of the unknown' within us is an acknowledegment of importance of luck. A good luck downsizes hard work requirement. No matter how much pride we take in working hard, an easy success is always sweeter. Luck does that. All of us are superstitious to some level, so that so that we can have that little extra from our luck. The sad part, about all this, no matter however hard we may try, we cannot make our luck. Maybe, its God's style of making us realize beyond all reason and development of our limitations as humans.Something we keep forgetting.
"Luck never gives; it only lends." ~Anonymous
