What Inspires Me?

 

I asked a couple of people to name someone successful. Following names came up,  Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, MS Dhoni, Virat Kohli, Sachin Tendulkar, Narayan Murthy, Mukesh Ambani and then someone else said Me!!

Quite frankly I was looking for no specific answer. All these people are without a doubt successful. What I did not find is names of people closer to them. No one mentioned their parents, children, spouses, friends, acquaintances, etc.  I can think of a few reasons for this.

Success is a state of mind, so while on one hand, we do believe that our children or spouses and even we accomplish a lot in life, we would like to go further. In that attempt, we would be proud of the accomplishments but will be wary of calling it successful lest it stops. Another reason could be that we are not proud of our achievements because we don’t see how far we have come. We only see our success vis-à-vis someone else’s life journey. Calling ourselves successful sometimes seems to be overdoing it. Our definition of success has always been, is more like black and white. We need it all to be successful. Only rich or only famous doesn’t cut it.

But I am going to pause here. This week my the focus was about success and changing definitions of success or in some way redefining it. Success, I have come to believe is all about inspiring. If your success inspires you and others then it’s a success worth sharing and my inspiration comes from everyday achievements, mine and others. My kids ensuring that they call their grandparents every day is a success, my friend ensuring that she goes to teach tribal students is a success, my help making sure that she turned up for work every day to take care of my little girl despite problems at home is a success.

Our lives are full of success stories that inspire. One such inspiration for me today was Snehal Hartalkar who is doing her bit to save the planet. She has been working for three years to create awareness of 3Rs in her community. Her story is inspiring and gives hope for our future. That is a success for me right there!

How did you get inspired today?