[Assam] Success: My younger brother's advice - to me - yesterday

[umesh sharma]

Hi,

My younger brother called me at 7:30 pm , while I was eating cream-cheese and bagel near the Washington Monument after a 2 mile walk - my bicycle got punctured while I was sleeping near the (no-so peaceful - roar of boats and planes)  Potomac River.

Now a father, he was giving me advice and asking me questions :-)

Strange, shouldn't it be the other way round?

However, advice from any source is useful as long as it is relevant. My brother's advice was about long term plans. Why not make more money - so that back home everyone can feel proud. It is true that a teacher of Jaipur School makes more money (in Delhi  ) than  I do  in much more  costly  USA.  Even  Jaipur School  is planning to hire a  star  teacher  at a salary  more  that  I  get. That  teacher 's  pay would be more  than the recently revised (upwards)  Indian Army Chief's pay (ofcourse not the perks). Thats a physics teacher's pay at school level .

Right now I get more money than Indian Army Chief gets :-)

But thats beside the point.

As I was telling a Jaipur School student (now in the USA) aim high and work towards it. I gave the example of MIT/Harvard students (atleast most of them) who have a different world view - they have different targets, levels of satisfaction. A BMW and a house facing the river  may not be enough for them (maybe it would). Or maybe they realize that this is not the pinnacle of success. I narrated to him my experience when I read the new book by Peale (the famous author of Power of Positive Thinking)  . I bought it on the platform of New Delhi Railway station while waiting for the train to Allahabad where I had to take the GRE exam (in my endevor to get to Harvard - though I applied to Columbia, Stanford and Berkeley too) .

One thing which struck me in the book ( I think it was http://www.amazon.com/Six-Attitudes-Winners-Pocket-Guides/dp/0842359060 ) that the poeple who consistently kept succeeding were the ones who always maintained that the best is yet to come. They maintained that if you think you have "arrived" thats when you start going downhill. Its true that the young man (alum of Jaipur School) was perhaps the highest paid Jaipur School alum - ever - at age 20 (he got his first paycheck recently) but short term can remain short term. Thats what I told him on Friday.

Two days later my younger brother gave me the same advice. 

Let knowledge come in from all sources. May wisdom develop anyhow (by God's grace).
Besides willing spirit flesh should be strong - to take action.
Any comments?


Umesh Sharma



PS: As I read in a Business World article someyears back " Success is a journey, not a destination" and " Quality is a moving target"

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