What is success?
If "A" is success in life, A = X + Y + Z
Work is X, Play is Y, and Z is keeping your mouth shut.
Albert Einstein
In this article I am going to critically analyze success according to Albert Einstein's definition. And then look at success in the mindfulness eyes. Why? Because without knowing where to go, you cannot make a complete journey.
Albert Einstein is a successful person, right? According to story, he was chased away from his kindergarten class because he was too slow. And I think the reason being, he is a diffuse thinker, that often dream about things he had felt and heard, more often than necessary. Guess what, he has come up with equations, that even less than 0.1% of the population would understand that given a whole life to study. Isn't it a remarkable achievement, and if you would believe that it is, we should clearly dissect his definition of success, to understand how he did it.
Albert Einstein definition of success
A = X + Y + Z
X
So, to achieve success we need to combine three factors, according to Einstein's equation. First one being A, is work. Working is necessary. And it is obvious factor. If you do nothing, nothing will happen. And there would be no success at all. You can have dreams, but if you keep sleeping on a couch sitting on them, dreams will never come true. Luck is there in universe but for you to attract luck we need to have some forces working toward us, which is the work. Maybe hard work in some cases, maybe smart work in the other. More importantly the relevant work. As you can see there are so many pseudo-works out there which can distract us. In fact, nobody can do nothing. Have you ever tried to do nothing? It is really hard to stay doing nothing. Hence, most of the time we do irrelevant tasks.
That is enough for the work. Shake your procrastination and start working is his advice on this.
Y
Y is play. What is play? Play is being creative in your work. Innovation comes when you are in creative state. Apart from doing old boring routine, even if it is old boring routine you have to start playing. There is no other way. Yes, you can forget play and enjoy 8-5-hour job. But as we all are humans, we will start to get exhausted soon enough and unless there is novelty in your work inherently, you will start to lose your enthusiasm and give up to boredom. More than this to push Forword as a society and individually creativity is a must. This is why I have created some articles in this blog for promoting just this, America is the dream land of creativity and creativity gives you wings.
Z
Z is keeping your mouth shut. I am sure Albert Einstein meant silence. Why? I have previously written great deal about making friends with silence. This doesn't mean physically not talking. It does mean mentally you are ready to listen. You accept the world as it is and more focus on listening, seeing and feeling things. Guess what, creativity is inherently tied to the silence. When you are silent you will start to notice patterns in the environment and your own mind. These ideas would have never come to your mind unless you are silent. This is why taking a walk matters, relaxing in the silence matters and diffuse thinking matters.
That concludes Einsteins equation for success. Work + Play + silence. Simple elegant and true.
As this blog is about mindfulness, we will look at success from mindful eyes to understand it better.
Definition of success from mindfulness.
Success is a mental object. Like everything else. When we consider this as a mental object we can notice its properties. Following are few examples to define success.
Successful lawyer.
Imagine a kid wanted to become a successful lawyer. First, he did not even know about lawyer, as few years back he was a toddler. Then after hearing all the adult stories, and seeing some lawyers, driving near the court, and seeing them in the news in court rooms, he has built a mental object of a "Lawyer" then he adds "Successful lawyer" to his picture. Once this image is fixed in his mind the target is there. Now he has to work and be creative and silent.
He goes through everything he has to go through hardships. Work towards the university and become a successful graduate. And join a law firm, and once he become a lawyer, we label him as a successful lawyer. There are many things which have happened during this long process of "successful lawyer" story. His "Successful Lawyer" image also has changed day after day. Sometimes he may never reach this. Although he is successful to the society, in Lawyer society he may be a pretty average lawyer. If his image matches his achievement of course he may be happy too. But most likely he also has some other success images, like healthy relationships, healthy body etc. He may be pretty happy about the path he has taken to become the successful lawyer himself is now. He may have mastered the Einsteins Equation to achieve the Success in his case.
But when I look at this scenario from a distance, I also see the absurdity of it. It is all due to information he received when he was young. That of a "Successful Lawyer". If it happened to be a "Successful football player" he would be per-suiting this all his life. And even be successful at this. If he was in a village in Vietnam, he would become a "Successful Monk".
It does not mean that we should not pursuit something. It just means that we should be aware of what is happening inside our brains, so we do not get carried away from the imaginary play, which we call life.
Rodeo Bull riding - most dangerous 8 seconds of the world.
In the sports world, Rodeo bull riding considered the most dangerous 8 seconds in the world. These bull riders try to stay on top of the bull holding with one hand and survive 8 seconds. If they do that, they are given marks according to the difficulty and ranked to find the winner. Now, this is not a child's play if you have seen a video. From the moment released to the arena, bulls buck and kick, and most of them would not ride 8 seconds. Some would even never ride again after serious fall, or for even that matter walk. What drives these brave men and women to such a risk?
If you look at the process of the "Successful Lawyer". You may understand now, the "Successful Bull rider" philosophy as well. It is all due to the information received by an innocent kid who lived in a ranch. And he saw adults doing this thing called "Bull riding" and became excited about it. Guess what after 15 more years he would become a successful bull rider. We all talk about how he achieved thing, but we never go back the timeline enough to understand what happened in the first place. I think we even might blame him if he seriously injured in the sport. So much so for a mental object.
Mindfulness let us observe your own mental objects and understand them. Still, you can be a successful lawyer and be a bull rider. But this time with a great wisdom of how it happened and happening.
Let's look back at the Albert Einstein equation to understand what he missed in the first place. Look at the equation again.
A = X + Y + Z
Can you the error? A, X, Y and Z everything is imaginary. To achieve success, you first have to imagine that there is a thing called "Success" in the first place. I am sure we will get to know this once our wisdom is shining enough in the prison of itself.
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