I have known a very successful man for over 15 years – a guy who started as a tailor assistant after doing his high school, and after a few years, was then owing a multi-million dollar businesses, but has lot of respect in his community and well know in Singapore business circles, desi and non-desi.

I once raised a question to him – a simple question – what was the secret of his success. He said “there are basically three ingredients of success: intelligence, diligence (hard work and constant effort in other terms) and good luck. But you do not necessarily need all three – if you have all three, nothing like it, but even two can lead you to success. If you have intelligence and good luck, there will be hardly any obstacles in your life. If you are diligent and have good luck, all obstacles and lack of knowledge will be overcome with constant hard work coupled with luck. HOWEVER, if you have intelligence and diligence, all will be of no use unless you have good luck. Even the wisest of decisions and best of efforts will turn into failures. I had a lot of good luck in my quota, and I am considered successful because of that.”

And I have realised over the years how true his words are in real life. Do you guys agree??

I have experienced this so many times in my life – I will narrate a few.

Good Luck : I was a fresh CA looking for a regular job to come out of the CA firm that I had done my articles with. I had gone to Bombay for an interview which did not materialise in a job. On the way back to local train station, I met one of my friends and just as I came out of the lift, saw that in the same building there was the office of Indian Rayon. I had heard about one of their presidents (Mr. Anand Rathi – who later became the SEBI chief) and since I had nothing else to do, I walked into that office to meet him. As luck would have it, he was in the office and free and I was ushered in. After introducing myself , we talked a bit about me and he came to know that I was a CA and looking for a job. After hearing my experience for two minutes – he said that he was looking for a person just like me and had a great opening for me. Five minutes later he was dictating a letter to his secretary telling the VP that I would join in one month. Pure luck that I saw the name of the company in the lobby and walked in!!

Good luck : 6 mths later I was looking for a change – but not aggressively – since I had a very good job but not a great salary. I had gone to my hometown to get married and my brother had come down from Singapore for the wedding. Just the day I was leaving for my honeymoon, I got a call from my brother from Delhi that he had, a week ago, met one of the biggest Indian industrialists in Indonesia who was at that time in Delhi. They had told him that they were urgently looking for a person to be the manager of their Singapore office, and had indicated that they might want to recruit him if he was interested. Ofcourse, for my brother it was a junior level job, but a day after my wedding, he chanced to meet them again and suggested my name. As luck would have it, they were in such a hurry, that they offered the job for me without meeting me and I was asked to forget about my honeymoon and proceed to Singapore ASAP after resigning form Indian Rayon. It was pure luck that my brother chanced to meet the boss when he wanted someone! And also whom you know rather than what you know!!!

Bad luck : I worked for this company for 9 years but in the last 2 years was very frustrated since the job did not hold any more excitement or growth potential. I even shifted to Indonesia from Singapore (from a head of a office to work directly under the boss as one amongst the dozen or so) to try and get a better position within the organisation – a combination of finance with PR (my education and my passion!) When I finally could not get that for 1.5 years, I decided to leave the company to join a new venture at 60% of the salary and none of the ‘rutaba’ I had in the old company as the confidant of the big industrial family! Two months later, I came to know that the guy whose position I had been wanting for over 5 years, had some problem with his colleagues and left within a month or so. All that was needed for me to get that job, since I was doing 10% of that in any case, was to stay with that company for three more months!!! Sheer bad luck or bad timing.

Bad luck : Two years later, I was again interviewed (my life’s first formal interview in an office with three persons interviewing) by a part owner of a big conglomerate in Singapore in the hospitality industry. They were looking for an accountant for their project in Indonesia and due to my knowledge of the country and language, offered me a job of an accountant at 30% higher remuneration. I thought over it and felt that I did not want to be just an accountant even at 30 higher salary (which meant I was going over 100k for the first time!) and I declined that job, which was basically a second man position in that particular project). As bad luck would have it, the two brother owner split 6 months later in one of the most talked about family case in Singapore in recent history -–and the chief of that project left the project to join the other brother and the accountant who was hired when I declined, became the chief of that project. Pure bad luck – no intelligence or diligence.

And so much for having the Positive attitude of doing something greater than just being an accountant!

What do you say guys – which is the greatest? Intelligence? Hard work? Positive thinking? Focus? Or pure good luck???

I could relate many instances that have affected me greatly both in professional and social life – which have been results of pure luck – good or bad – but I think I have already written enough. Would now like to hear from you all.

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Chandresh

Advice is free – lessons I charge for!!

What about opportunity, chandresh? or do you count that as luck? indonesia is the land of opportunity. it is possible to become super rich in this country.

Chandresh,
Thats a very interesting and thought provoking post.

I will try to keep my response short .
With all due respect to the " successful" gentleman in singpore, he has narrowed down to the ingredients of success pretty well "but not quite".

I feel ... that every human has sufficient level of intelligence to make him/her successful and there are many examples of that.

Second- luck is a matter of being in the right place at the right time - which is again a result of constant initiative or "diligence".
"Good Luck" or as Chris rightly puts it " right opportunity" comes only when we are looking for it, though it might seem like luck when things come out of the blue , but if you analyse it will will be a result of some tiny initiative on your part.

We should not resort to blaming lack of intelligence or luck as a cover up for any slack in initiative/ " diligence" on our part.

As an old and simplistic axiom goes -

try, try and try again ...till you succeed .

it may be simplistic, but it means a lot .

It does not say try if you are intelligent , or try if you are lucky ....you will be lucky if you keep trying ...if not right away but slowly an surely you will findthe right opportunity, the key is to not give up on trying .

This is where positive attitude comes into picture. Positive attitude keeps a person in the healthy mode of trying and trying again without giving up. If you give up positive atitude you will give up trying as well. That is where you will run out of "luck".

To sum up , Positive attitude and due diligence is ALL one needs to succeed.

The difference between successful and unsuccessful people is that successful people follow thru with their ideas TILL they succeed , unsuccessful ones find one reason or the other to justify why they stopped trying.

Blaming bad luck and lack of intelligence, seems one of those reasons to me .

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Success is a journey , not a destination .
Success is getting what you want, happiness is liking what you got.

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What can be imagined, can be achieved.

Good luck to you Chandresh. May your friend's tips leads you to a successful man like your friend.

Not to go too far for examples, there are 1000s of examples in our home country itself.

Cheers
Raj

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A person is never more on trial than in a moment of excessive good fortune.

Dear Chandresh & all,

You may not be knowing me, I am little new to the website and have tried to be a part in various posts.

Let me put my view a little straight... I feel "THERE IS NO WORD LUCK EXISTS IN THIS WORLD". It is one more word the human has invented to benchmark his/her success or failure.

We all function on the "KARM PRINCIPAL"...Everything depends on actions, there is always something which leads to something. Its only we who relate the bottomline/result with the word luck.

like, "KUCHH ACHHA HUA TO BOLENGE MARA NASEEB ACHHA THA, AUR KUCHH BURA HUA TO BOLENGE YAAR MERA NASEEB HI KHARAB HAI", but what I say in all these cases, have anyone tried to re-evaluate the actions taken?...There is always a wrong decision taken by us only, for a failure or a right decision taken in our success.

Like, for an e.g. to take one of your cases chandresh, it was shere NETWROKING due to which you got through SINGAPORE, your brother met the induastrialist (once again an action) and that person told him that whether he knwos any one or not. See there is a Management/Networking rule..."IF TWO PEOPLE AT ANY DISTANCE WITH EACH OTHER WANTS TO MEET THEY JUST NEED SIX GUYS IN BETWEEN THEM"...Its all networking due to which singapore happened... Your brother became a CENTRE OF INFLUENCE for that industrialist.

Le me give you my example, I was promoted recently and I shifted from surat to a place like GANDHIDHAM...I wanted a good house, the rents are quite high...What I did, apart from the regular brokers, I spreaded the need to my sub-ordinates and staff memebrs, they became my centre of influences and I got a god house without brokerage, deposit from a junior collegue of mine.

This is just my view as I strongly belive the BHAGVAD GEETA's KARM SIDHANT...every act has got a combination of heart+mind+hands+legs everything. Its only the proportion of the utility of each organ changes depending upon the KARMA.

This does not mean, what others have written is wrong, these are my views and I respect every one's say.

Regards,

VJ

Quote:

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Orginally posted by VJ
This is just my view as I strongly belive the BHAGVAD GEETA's KARM SIDHANT...every act has got a combination of heart+mind+hands+legs everything. Its only the proportion of the utility of each organ changes depending upon the KARMA.

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I dis-agree on that VJ, there is definatly LUCK exists on which we have no control, and it works well when you work hard and honestly for your goal.

If it would have not been there then there would have many Gandhi, Albert Einstein,bill gates,tata,dhiru bhai in the world. don't you think that many people would have worked hard apart from these great people.


Cheers
Raj

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A person is never more on trial than in a moment of excessive good fortune.