# Life Secrets! I don't know why people ask me for advice about life. Perhaps it's because I've lived a long time, or because I smile in a way that suggests I know something they don't. Whatever the reason, they come—with their troubles, their questions, their desperate hopes—as if I possess some secret map to happiness. The truth is simpler and more terrible than they imagine. There are no secrets. Or rather, the only secret is that life doesn't care much for our plans. It doesn't consult us before turning our world upside down. A phone call comes at midnight. A person walks out of your life wearing shoes you bought them. Your body betrays you on an ordinary Tuesday. The stock market collapses. Your child asks you a question you cannot answer. And you discover, in that moment, that all your preparation has been for nothing. People want formulas. They want me to say: *Do this, and you will be happy. Avoid that, and you will be safe.* They want a ledger—debit and credit, cause and effect, a universe that balances like a shopkeeper's account book. But life is not arithmetic. Life is music that refuses to resolve. I have seen men destroy themselves chasing security. I have watched women sacrifice their names for other people's dreams. I have known the wealthy who slept poorly and the poor who laughed like bells. I have attended funerals where the dead seemed more alive than the living, and celebrations where everyone was dying inside. So what do I tell them, these seekers who find their way to my door? I tell them this: The secret is to stop looking for secrets. Stop asking life for permission. Stop waiting for the perfect moment, because it will not come—or it will come when you least expect it, wearing the face of grief. Live. Make mistakes. Break things. Love people who terrify you. Fail spectacularly. Forgive yourself as you would forgive a child. Plant trees whose shade you will never sit in. Write letters you never send. Laugh until your sides ache. Cry when the world demands it. This is not wisdom. It is not even advice. It is simply what I have learned from staying alive long enough to understand that staying alive was the point all along.

 
Life is beautiful only when we have a beautiful life.
I'm the eleventh one out of ten you can count, I can bet! . . . . I'm an optimist. I agree even to be the last optimist in the world. I'm born every moment. I believe life is more beautiful than we can imagine. So, I always enjoy it with others! I've a personal library and a collection of music and movies. Without these treasures, my existence would become meaningless.
Let me share some lessons my life has taught me:
Among our batchmates, probably I was the first person who took the risk to explore the avenue of traditional business. But not always it's easy to walk on the path less travelled. Educated entrepreneurs must have the guts to walk away from the apparently secured well-paid jobs and stay on that out-track at least as long as success shows its first sign. Things are not that easy. Now I'm a derailed engineer. I started with my coaching centre, later entered the stock market taking some calculated risk (God bless the investors including me! Your friend says, money is nothing? Ok fine, tell him to invest in the share market.) My succession of such attempts ended in establishing my own gift business branded by the name DOVANA. I owned 2 shops and I'd always dreamt of being a business magnet extending my domain over some other sister concerns as well before my dream transformed meeting newer impulses. (Lucky I'm as I did never have to regret my new impulses.) Yes, I was planning to kill my brainchild. To become successful you've to start young. It's even more important to fail young if you really want to fail in any of your attempts. To fail successfully is an art. Now I feel, sometimes failures are good and life-saving. I always found myself in a position that hardly seemed comfortable to cope with. When I saw my friends already having crossed a long way, I felt just helpless. Gradually they were becoming the top professionals in their respective sectors. If you have not been accustomed to being considered a 'nobody' by others since your childhood, it's difficult to see yourself a 'nobody' even for a short time. I strongly felt only walking or running at least to catch if not I could exceed them was not enough; I must take a flying leap! I was struggling to win, but fighting against small people was constantly giving me a hollow inferior feeling. I was out there alone on my own island, and I felt I was disengaged. Even if you win a fight against small people, it gives you a feeling that you're a kind of them, just a mediocre talent. Success in business is an extremely selfish game. Maybe, you're thinking, 'Huh!

I’m already quite selfish, but to win more than others, you need to be more selfish than you truly are.

I used to talk constantly with my engineering batchmates from CUET (I’m from the HSC 2002 batch) and kept pushing us to start a software business. I found only a handful truly serious about it in words, and fewer still in action. The simplest way to begin anything is simply to begin. Everyone around me wanted to embark on a journey of a thousand miles; no one was willing to take even the first step. I know it’s true that taking risks isn’t always easy, especially when you’ve been raised in a world drowning in countless NOs. How simple it is to say NO to an attempt! Life isn’t always kind enough to let you stay indifferent to all the opportunity costs and remain tethered to your dream when it lies elsewhere, defying convention. You start to feel that maybe you’re destined to be just a ‘nobody’—someone for whom nothing awaits. It’s awful to be a NOBODY in the eyes of others. All the while you’re dreaming, scheming, hoping about your future, and simultaneously wondering what happens if you find yourself in the wrong place when time has already run out. (One thing I can tell you: it’s never too late to realize it’s getting late.) Life didn’t come with an instruction manual. So it’s our right to use it and misuse it! I can tell you honestly that playing with life is a beautiful game, but you must be careful to ensure it stays beautiful till the very end. Winners stand alone only because so few can truly win. Living forgotten and unrecognized—I can assure you—gives you the worst feeling imaginable. Life isn’t always smooth enough to let you rest comfortably in the belief that “I think, therefore I am”; life makes you feel the hunger to start believing “Others think, therefore I am.” Identity matters more than existence. Now I believe that deciding what you truly want is everything. It took me almost two decades to decide what I really wanted. Once I decided, it took only a few months to get it. Whatever you pursue—job, business, or anything else—you must work not just hard but also smart to become successful enough to smile confidently, never embarrassed when you see others smile at your past ‘sweet failures.’ Failures were never meant to be sweet; your success is what makes them so.

I don’t have a role model, but I hope to become someone’s role model one day. I’m deeply grateful to those who’ve trusted me all along. I’m proud I didn’t let them down.

~ Feng Tianwei, 2012 Olympic table tennis bronze medalist, Singapore

So true! Sometimes your best role model is simply YOU—in the better state you could become.

# Success

Not always is success about becoming someone else you dream of being. Rather, it’s about becoming a better version of yourself than you were—or at least not diminishing the good you’ve already become. Being consistently good is no simple matter. And here’s the truth: hardly anything worth having comes without a challenge worth taking. Success isn’t something you deserve; it’s something you earn. The easiest way to convince people you merit something is simply to earn it. The fact is plain: your success is what *you* believe you’ve earned; your failure is what *others* think you deserve.

Success. It’s living without sighs. It’s dancing the way you want to dance and making people believe you dance beautifully, even if you don’t. It’s turning your own style into someone else’s favourite brand, foolish as it might be. It’s sometimes making others laugh at your worst jokes. It’s being heard even when you’re silent. It’s the chance to tell people that your millionth failure—meeting it, living through it—was necessary after all. It’s making your failures worth speaking about, whether by you or by others. It’s what it is, not the opposite of failure as the world so often insists, so wrongly believes.

Throughout my life, I’ve held to one simple practice: I’ve always revered every peak I’ve aimed for, and I’ve made successful people my heroes. It gives me tremendous drive. Really, it does. Even a child wants to become the hero he dreams of. It’s easy to work toward something when you truly admire it—in any job, any business. Your business is like your child. You can’t expect your child to be a complete man overnight. In the same way, you can’t expect your business to flourish before you’ve grown accustomed to the harsh judgements of those around you. People have a gift for undermining what they don’t understand or what makes them uneasy. Some people simply cannot appreciate. So it’s foolish to measure yourself by what they say. Kind words heal better than any soup. Have a bowl of nourishing broth—served to you if you’re fortunate, or made by your own hands if you want to create your own fortune. Get busy living. I’ve always found this true: learn freely, and you lose only when you’ve paid. So invest before you earn. Draw inspiration from those who never stop until they’ve crossed the miles still left to go before they sleep. Quitters are never winners. *Que sera, sera*—whatever will be, will be. Things are as they are; things will be as they will be. If you quit, only you have quit. Others won’t. Others will reach the peak. Success is the sweet fruit of refusing to quit. The easiest way to finish something is to start it. Once you’ve started, you’re already on the path to the end. If you finish before it finishes you, you must find another way. But not every new way is better; sometimes it only brings new pain. If you still don’t know what to do, ask your heart. Do what you love; love what you do. Your heart, strangely enough, knows better than you ever will.

Never ask a blind man to help you cross the road because he is also trying or has failed to cross it. If you can’t see ask someone who has already seen. Better to live 1 minute with a wise man than to stay 1 hundred years with an idiot. First, decide, deserve and then desire. These 3 D’s can give you what you and others want from your life. Not always life is easy, but it’s still worth living. Tough time doesn’t last long in case of the tough men. Be that tough. Don’t tell the world what you can do, let the world tell it for you. Your actions speak much louder than your words. Don’t challenge others, challenge yourself because at the end of the day all you’re left with, is only yourself. It’s never too late, rather being late is good as you’ve already paid the price for mistakes that others haven’t yet. Surely they will have to pay it maybe when the price is much higher! You’re safe. Seriously! Know what to do, learn how to do it and JUST DO IT! Be that tough guy for whom time waits as he has refused to shape his life with time, by time, for time. Remember, only your results are rewarded, not your efforts. This is the way the world accepts or rejects you.
Few things you can consider keeping in mind:
~ Never take anything for granted, even your failure.
~ Never call it a day until & unless the day ends.
~ Only your results are rewarded, not your efforts.
~ Really perform when you’re performing.
~ Only your performance performs; not my prayers or curses.
~ Sometimes your luck matters much more than your performance.
~ Excuses are of no use. If you win, you need not show them. If you lose, you should not show them.
~ The game is always ON. So . . . . . . . JUST PLAY!
Good luck!