Success is subjective and measuring success is a difficult task. While focusing on the goal we usually forget about the milestones and achievements on the way to it. Mr. Rajesh Soundararajan, parent of Krish Iyengar – Grade 5, Ishaan Iyengar – Grade 2 and Ayaan Iyengar – Montessori at Ekya School, JP Nagar shares his views in this blog on the concept of success and failure in reference to Chandrayaan 2.
Did Chandrayaan Fail?
“Was Chandrayaan a success or a failure?” I asked this question to my 7 yr old Ishaan and 5 yr old Ayaan.
Their answer was loud and clear, and it stumped me as a parent. They said, “Appa, though it would seem like Chandrayaan failed, it mostly succeeded.” Ishaan added, “It traveled tens of thousands of kilometers for 47 days, and only in the last 2.1 km and last minute it did not work, 47 days it went perfectly.”
That brought me to a spate of questions to myself? You can ask a million such variations of the question – Is ‘x’ a success or a failure?”
But what these kids answered was a simple, lucid and a miraculous explanation. Success or Failure are both points of view. It is a point of reference akin to the cliche – a glass half full.
How would you define success?
“How much money, degree, title or power would mean ‘successful’? Or is success the critical factor or happiness? Or is happiness the factor of success?”
Is there something called a failure at all?
“Or success a sum of all experiences? Does it even exist in this ‘reframed’ definition?”
We homo sapiens often set a goal and perceive that reaching that goal is a success. We attribute everything else as failure. We are focused on the end outcomes and view our entire effort from that single lens, single perspective.
On the way to that BIG-G Goal, there are many stumbling blocks (let us call them the small-G Goals,) and we overcome each of them. There are millions and thousands of success points along the way, which we don’t even acknowledge or recognize, let alone appreciate. The invaluable experience earned in the process thus is nullified, for want of a metric or a quantifiable measure. And then what stops us from pausing that much and internalising that experience and relishing that small success.
Should success be a rat race where there is only one winning point, and one winner and all else mean nothing? Is that what life teaches us?
This is no longer a question to children aged 5 and 6, this is a clarion call for adults, for parents, for the society at large.
Think again. “Was Chandrayaan a success or failure?”
A short profile of Mr. Rajesh Soundararajan:
Rajesh Soundararajan wears many hats – From being a CEO, Dad, Engineer, Entrepreneur, Farmer, IvyMBA, PoliticalSatirist, RoadTripper to a Shutterbug. An ex-IBM, ex-Microsoft Executive, he now runs Futureshift Consulting where he creates value and impactful outcomes for its clients in technology and business consulting. Rajesh is also a Mentor of Change under Atal Innovation Mission, a certified Buzan Mindmap Trainer and is a member of High IQ Mensa club with a recorded IQ of 156. He invests a lot of his spare time in children, environment and social issues.
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