Success - my thoughts (Chime in!)

[MVVS Reddy]

Tom looked at the New York Times headline in my hands about Obama’s second inauguration and wondered aloud, “Reddy, he is about our age. What are we doing here?”

 

“Tom, it’s even worse for me if I look at it this way. He went to the same school as I did. But guess what? I don’t know about you, but I could be tending to water buffaloes and working in the fields as many other boys in my village did.”

 

“You did very well then!” Tom replied sheepishly.

 

That conversation on that flight to Arizona ended a couple of weeks ago, but made me think.

 

Below are my thoughts about success that I share with my children. I tried to illustrate my points with a good number of examples. Feel free to use them to your own taste.

 

Does success mean the same thing for everyone? We tend to attribute success to having loads of money. Or position of power. It doesn’t need to be though. Consider a parent who raised her kids to be exceptional citizens. Consider a dedicated teacher who elevated the lives of his students, planted seeds of learning and helped them become scientists, social reformers, authors etc. Or consider a doctor who saved hundreds of lives in ethnic strife-torn Africa as a member of Doctors without Borders. Remember, money maybe a necessary ingredient to have good life, that itself may not bring happiness. Otherwise, why the U.S., the richest country on the earth, fails to make the list of the top 10 happiest nations in the world (according to OECD)?  Define success in your own terms; not how your parents or people around you define it.

 

Time and again I am reminded that success is not a one-time event. Nor does it happen only during early years in life. Julia Child hasn’t started her career as a chef until her late thirties, and her TV personality as a chef hasn’t taken off until her late fifties. Harry Truman, the 33^rd U.S. President never finished college and was rejected once by U.S. Military Academy because of poor eyesight. He had a series of failures in farming and haberdashery in his early life. Colonel Sanders, the founder of KFC, hadn’t seen much success in his career and hadn’t started his KFC franchise until he was 65.

 

There are endless list of stories about people who succeeded despite failures in life and rejections. General Colin Powell in a recent talk mentioned that he graduated with the bare minimum GPA of 2.0 (That’s similar to getting 35% pass mark in Indian system) from the City University of New York. That didn’t stop him from becoming one of the most respected U.S. Generals in recent years. And there was Walk Disney, who was told he lacked imagination to get a job. Michael Jordan failed to make the varsity basketball team during his sophomore year in high school. But we all know how he became a basketball legend. So, let failures or rejection not get the best of you.

 

Remember success takes time and discipline. Behind each success we see on TV or in a court, or read in a paper, or see in life, there are tons of hours of hard work and persistence. Author Tony Schwartz cites a study (in “Be Excellent at Anything”) that shows the difference between turning into a top-notch musician and a mediocre one is an additional practice of 4000 hours. Mike Piazza was a long shot 1,380th player picked in the Major League Baseball the draft. He practiced every day late into night. By the time he retired a few years ago, he was the 12-time All Star and one of the best hitting catchers of baseball.

 

There is no one single formula to success. What worked for someone may not work for others. We all have different strengths and weaknesses and desires. Even if someone just did all of these - delivered newspapers as a boy, attended Columbia University, learned investing from Prof. Graham and Prof. Dodd – just as Warren Buffet did, he might not turn into another great investor! Look at our own circle of friends. NVR, PVVSSR, and NSRP got diplomas from Polytechnics, not the idealized pathways to success. But they carved out their own successes to become a Chief Technology Officer, a Chief Engineer or a Vice President of a high-tech company. You remember Bhadrudu, a good friend to some of us from Tadikonda-days. In the early 80’s he was a clerk in the Telecom Department in Kakinada. Today besides being the Additional Director of tribal welfare department, he is an acclaimed author of 26 Telugu literary books!

 

Have a passion for one or two and go with it. It may take time to discover our own passion(s). In one of his greatest speeches, Steve Jobs told the Stanford students in his commencement speech, “Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.” It may take some failures and some tries before one would discover her passion in life. Salman Khan, an MIT/Harvard graduate and the founder of the Khan Academy was a hedge fund analyst before he discovered his passion for education. Adam Steltzner, a lead landing engineer of the Curiosity Rover’s Mars mission was a drummer in a band (he had an F+ in Geometry in high school!) before he discovered his passion for astronomy and physics in his 20s and went to college.

 

The sixteenth U.S. President, Abraham Lincoln once said, “Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other thing.” While growing up we all heard our elders saying “so and so was blessed by God to be intelligent.” I am a firm believer that we all were born with nearly equal (don’t mean identical) mental capabilities. Multitudes of scientific studies have proven this point. There is a lot truth to the saying “yatha bhavam tatha bhavati (యథా భావం తథా భవతి). If you don’t believe in yourself, no one else will. Believe in yourself and work resolutely to accomplish your goals!

 

Pie is bigger than you think. Many of us faced difficult economic odds growing up (my father couldn’t afford to send me to engineering entrance preparation) and during times when things were scarce, opportunities were rare, and daily subsistence was uncertain. Those circumstances forced many Indians (same case with Chinese) to gravitate towards professions (engineers and doctors) that provided better livelihood and financial security. Fortunately our kids don’t have the same set of financial constraints nor are limited by opportunities. When my daughter was in 4^th grade, her Chinese American friend asked her “what do you want to be when you grow up?” My daughter said “I don’t know.” Her friend was puzzled, “How come you don’t know yet? I want to be a doctor.” Looks like every Indian American kid wants to be a neurologist and every Chinese American child already figured out her life’s calling is to become a doctor. Our children live in a free society with unlimited opportunities and million problems waiting to be solved. There are 48 million Americans with auditory problems. 43% of Americans (and 29% of 55+ old) have little retirement savings. 1.8 billion people will be living in countries with absolute water scarcity by 2025. There are millions of stories waiting to be written and told. They could be the next JK Rowling, RK Laxman, Yo Yo Ma, Francis Crick, or Frank Lloyd Wright.

[GVSSS Srinivas]

Very well written. Thanks Reddy

Unfortunately, success came to be measured in terms of Materialistic possessions and while it is important to pursue some materialistic progress, one should remember and remind( oneself) that ''that alone" is not success.

It might sound like sour grapes, but everyone needs to STOP hankering after bigger ( car/ house/ whatever)..

Success defined by THINGS is elastic and there is always some one who has Bigger ( ugh.)

Pursuit of excellence gives satisfaction ( if one is not a perfectionist) and success that is not "steal"-able.

all the "things" are acquired so we can DO SOMETHING.

but the thrill of acquiring something is so short lived that one starts on a new THING.

 Just having things should not be a GOAL.

Define your Goal or help defining Goals for your children.

in a lighter vein, Earning Billions like Bill gates is NOT a good GOAL but giving up Billions to charity is a GREAT GOALl!!
--btw, gol mal hai sub mal(l) golmal hai.

wohi goal hai jis mein Mall nahi hota hai.

GVSSS

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With Best Wishes,
GVSSS Srinivas.

[chandra sekhar korrapati]

Gvss true, i like your  success meaning gg also  may like it KCHV --- On Wed, 6/3/13, GVSSS Srinivas <gvs...@gmail.com> wrote:

[RMallidi]

 

Thanks GVSSS. Although it sounds funny, "wohi goal hai jis mein Mall nahi hota hai," it's a gem of  a saying!

BTW, a couple of you asked me if the intro was fictitious to get attention (as many people use that style of writing). Actually none of the the content I wrote was pigment of my imagination. Tom whom I mentioned at the beginning is a colleague, has a PhD in material science from Stanford U, and the conversation between us was real.

Reddy

[Guntreddi Venkata Naidu]

I have gone through the entire text it was thought provoking. I am gvn. Gopalarao village
presently professor in vet gynaecolgy ntr cvscgannavaram svvu

[gulla gopala rao]

Translating your passion into reality is success.

 

There need not be a goal at the childhood itself , because that was the age  which doesnt have maturity to decide up on a specific goal . Nothing can beat experience . Experience  brings out situation where one  could find a way to success with passion .

 

A goal should always be associated with your passion to enjoy the journey.

A success cannot be encircled to a few areas but it is diverse  and  one can be successful, in any area of his interest.Sometimes  a little sucess makes that subject a thing of passion.

 

Scuccess is more often related to money why because the entire generation spends its total lifetime in earning money and hence it is obvious that anyone who earns is a successful person to him .

 

I always say to my colleagues here that I dont appreciate managemnt lessons much,  why because , most of the times it tells how to be like another, which is a ridiculous exercise.

 

I do not know whether I am in sync with MVS observations , but I want to say , success can be in any area , nothing inferior, nothing superior. And  try not  to be like others , drive yourself according to your passion, intuition and strengths.

 

This is one of the message I have given to the CEC students of APRJC , that nothing is inferior to other , you can excel in  with CEC also ;

 

glaring example is that we had many civil servants from CEC group.....

 

But we have to watch carefully the  path in that process ...... it should be ethical , legal  and acceptable.

 

 

I ll close with a  dialogue in old movie by Kota :

 

 " behind every success , there is a crime "

 

 

gg 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From: Guntreddi Venkata Naidu <guntreddiv...@gmail.com>
To: aprs...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Friday, 8 March 2013 1:50 PM
Subject: Re: Success - my thoughts (Chime in!)

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[Thota Bhavanarayana]

Dear all.

I am rather in a trans for the past few days after reading Reddy's thoughts and the comments that followed. Everybody concurred that the path is more important compared to the goal. I have read and reread these posts. They gave me strength to go ahead in my own direction to reach the goal that is associated with passion.

Thank you all.
TBN

[sastry_604 chamarthi]

Gvsss, Well written. CHVS

---

From: GVSSS Srinivas <gvs...@gmail.com>;
To: <aprs...@googlegroups.com>;

Subject: Re: Success - my thoughts (Chime in!)

Sent: Wed, Mar 6, 2013 2:57:40 PM

Very well written. Thanks Reddy Unfortunately, success came to be measured in terms of Materialistic possessions and while it is important to pursue some materialistic progress, one should remember and remind( oneself) that ''that alone" is not success. It might sound like sour grapes, but everyone needs to STOP hankering after bigger ( car/ house/ whatever).. Success defined by THINGS is elastic and there is always some one who has Bigger ( ugh.) Pursuit of excellence gives satisfaction ( if one is not a perfectionist) and success that is not "steal"-able. all the "things" are acquired so we can DO SOMETHING. but the thrill of acquiring something is so short lived that one starts on a new THING.  Just having things should not be a GOAL. Define your Goal or help defining Goals for your children. in a lighter vein, Earning Billions like Bill gates is NOT a good GOAL but giving up Billions to charity is a GREAT GOALl!! --btw, gol mal hai sub mal(l) golmal hai. wohi goal hai jis mein Mall nahi hota hai.

GVSSS

On Sat, Mar 2, 2013 at 10:14 AM, MVVS Reddy <priv...@gmail.com> wrote:

Tom looked at the New York Times headline in my hands about Obama’s second inauguration and wondered aloud, “Reddy, he is about our age. What are we doing here?”   “Tom, it’s even worse for me if I look at it this way. He went to the same school as I did. But guess what? I don’t know about you, but I could be tending to water buffaloes and working in the fields as many other boys in my village did.”   “You did very well then!” Tom replied sheepishly.   That conversation on that flight to Arizona ended a couple of weeks ago, but made me think.   Below are my thoughts about success that I share with my children. I tried to illustrate my points with a good number of examples. Feel free to use them to your own taste.   Does success mean the same thing for everyone? We tend to attribute success to having loads of money. Or position of power. It doesn’t need to be though. Consider a parent who raised her kids to be exceptional citizens. Consider a dedicated teacher who elevated the lives of his students, planted seeds of learning and helped them become scientists, social reformers, authors etc. Or consider a doctor who saved hundreds of lives in ethnic strife-torn Africa as a member of Doctors without Borders. Remember, money maybe a necessary ingredient to have good life, that itself may not bring happiness. Otherwise, why the U.S., the richest country on the earth, fails to make the list of the top 10 happiest nations in the world (according to OECD)?  Define success in your own terms; not how your parents or people around you define it.   Time and again I am reminded that success is not a one-time event. Nor does it happen only during early years in life. Julia Child hasn’t started her career as a chef until her late thirties, and her TV personality as a chef hasn’t taken off until her late fifties. Harry Truman, the 33rd U.S. President never finished college and was rejected once by U.S. Military Academy because of poor eyesight. He had a series of failures in farming and haberdashery in his early life. Colonel Sanders, the founder of KFC, hadn’t seen much success in his career and hadn’t started his KFC franchise until he was 65.   There are endless list of stories about people who succeeded despite failures in life and rejections. General Colin Powell in a recent talk mentioned that he graduated with the bare minimum GPA of 2.0 (That’s similar to getting 35% pass mark in Indian system) from the City University of New York. That didn’t stop him from becoming one of the most respected U.S. Generals in recent years. And there was Walk Disney, who was told he lacked imagination to get a job. Michael Jordan failed to make the varsity basketball team during his sophomore year in high school. But we all know how he became a basketball legend. So, let failures or rejection not get the best of you.   Remember success takes time and discipline. Behind each success we see on TV or in a court, or read in a paper, or see in life, there are tons of hours of hard work and persistence. Author Tony Schwartz cites a study (in “Be Excellent at Anything”) that shows the difference between turning into a top-notch musician and a mediocre one is an additional practice of 4000 hours. Mike Piazza was a long shot 1,380th player picked in the Major League Baseball the draft. He practiced every day late into night. By the time he retired a few years ago, he was the 12-time All Star and one of the best hitting catchers of baseball.   There is no one single formula to success. What worked for someone may not work for others. We all have different strengths and weaknesses and desires. Even if someone just did all of these - delivered newspapers as a boy, attended Columbia University, learned investing from Prof. Graham and Prof. Dodd – just as Warren Buffet did, he might not turn into another great investor! Look at our own circle of friends. NVR, PVVSSR, and NSRP got diplomas from Polytechnics, not the idealized pathways to success. But they carved out their own successes to become a Chief Technology Officer, a Chief Engineer or a Vice President of a high-tech company. You remember Bhadrudu, a good friend to some of us from Tadikonda-days. In the early 80’s he was a clerk in the Telecom Department in Kakinada. Today besides being the Additional Director of tribal welfare department, he is an acclaimed author of 26 Telugu literary books!   Have a passion for one or two and go with it. It may take time to discover our own passion(s). In one of his greatest speeches, Steve Jobs told the Stanford students in his commencement speech, “Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.” It may take some failures and some tries before one would discover her passion in life. Salman Khan, an MIT/Harvard graduate and the founder of the Khan Academy was a hedge fund analyst before he discovered his passion for education. Adam Steltzner, a lead landing engineer of the Curiosity Rover’s Mars mission was a drummer in a band (he had an F+ in Geometry in high school!) before he discovered his passion for astronomy and physics in his 20s and went to college.   The sixteenth U.S. President, Abraham Lincoln once said, “Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other thing.” While growing up we all heard our elders saying “so and so was blessed by God to be intelligent.” I am a firm believer that we all were born with nearly equal (don’t mean identical) mental capabilities. Multitudes of scientific studies have proven this point. There is a lot truth to the saying “yatha bhavam tatha bhavati (యథా భావం తథా భవతి). If you don’t believe in yourself, no one else will. Believe in yourself and work resolutely to accomplish your goals!   Pie is bigger than you think. Many of us faced difficult economic odds growing up (my father couldn’t afford to send me to engineering entrance preparation) and during times when things were scarce, opportunities were rare, and daily subsistence was uncertain. Those circumstances forced many Indians (same case with Chinese) to gravitate towards professions (engineers and doctors) that provided better livelihood and financial security. Fortunately our kids don’t have the same set of financial constraints nor are limited by opportunities. When my daughter was in 4th grade, her Chinese American friend asked her “what do you want to be when you grow up?” My daughter said “I don’t know.” Her friend was puzzled, “How come you don’t know yet? I want to be a doctor.” Looks like every Indian American kid wants to be a neurologist and every Chinese American child already figured out her life’s calling is to become a doctor. Our children live in a free society with unlimited opportunities and million problems waiting to be solved. There are 48 million Americans with auditory problems. 43% of Americans (and 29% of 55+ old) have little retirement savings. 1.8 billion people will be living in countries with absolute water scarcity by 2025. There are millions of stories waiting to be written and told. They could be the next JK Rowling, RK Laxman, Yo Yo Ma, Francis Crick, or Frank Lloyd Wright.

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With Best Wishes, GVSSS Srinivas.

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