SUCCESS HAS NO SHORTCUT
BY AN INDIAN WRITER

Success in all our endeavors is what we all want but, most of us forget that for reaching success, the road is not strewn with roses. The walk is not a cakewalk, nor is it a gift on a platter. Success is an achievement by constant diligence and most of us fail to achieve because most of us lack the essential quality of diligence.
The magic of hard work and perseverance cannot be underestimated. We see in general that people who have succeeded in life have done an immense amount of hard work and their success is we all see, but the effort put in, we fail to measure. We do wonder how he could achieve so much, but it is absolutely certain that achievement has come his way after much of continued effort. Most of us do make efforts but, soon lose heart and leave our projects and this is why we fail to reach the pinnacle of success. It must be clear in our minds that, we never can achieve with just a simple raising of a finger, we have got to put our heart and soul in a particular job and that also with continued vigour in every attempt then only we can hope for any success. Those of us who leave effort midway are obviously left midway by success also, and then we are disheartened and broke, just to ogle jealously at those who have succeeded. If we have the confidence in our effort, there is nothing that can deter us from achieving.
History presents to us several examples of achievers whose achievements were due to the single magic of the labour they put in their project. For example, Tenzing Norgay could achieve world fame, only after making dozens of unsuccessful efforts at conquering the Mt. Everest.
India could achieve its goal of achieving independence from British regime only because of continued effort and sacrifice of our leaders, like Mahatma Gandhi and others of the generation. Ever since 1856, which saw the first war of independence for India, a continued effort of more than a century, we finally achieved our objective in the year 1947. If this century’s effort was not there, the position of India would have been quite different and our history would have been something else. This shows that continuous effort can even change the course of history of a nation than what about smaller achievements of an individual.
Even after seeing that effort is the magic wand for all achievements, some people still hold the view that, at least some people in the world do get whatever they want without much effort. This may be true in the case of a very few who may have been born with silver spoons in their mouths’ but, by and large, all others whom we see on the pedestal of success are there only after hard labour. We have not seen them working but we are able to notice them only when they reach certain heights. On the other hand, there may be so many who might have fallen on the way, and this must certainly have been because there was less strength in their effort. Success is mostly not God sent it is mostly a reward God gives for hard work. Those who put in constant labour towards an end, surely achieve a position of great advantage. It is of course always an uphill task to improve prospects.
Let us see right from childhood, those children who work hard and constantly and regularly are always the ones to stand first. We do often admire or feel jealous of people rising, but we fail to see what extra effort they are putting in to improve their prospects. Those who sit pretty and just complain about the success of others are never the ones to do much in life. Those who make continuous effort in the right direction rarely lose in the struggle of life. One important password for all of us to follow is that, there is no short cut to success, the road to success is thorny and very long. Those who dare to cross this road and undertake the tedious journey with a continuous effort always find leisure at the end.