Share your thoughts with our readers: Email your contribution, no less than 300 words, to [email protected] The boy was hearing-impaired and fidgety. He was expelled from school after three months. The teacher considered him “too stupid to learn”. His mother decided to teach him at home. She encouraged him to be self-educated. So the boy spent most of his time in the library. He was especially interested in scientific books. His mother bought him the Dictionary of Science and he read it all. He set up his own chemical laboratory in the basement of his house when he was only 10 years old. This boy grew up to be a man who patented 1,100 inventions in his life. The boy was the great inventor Thomas Alva Edison. Edison's greatest invention was the light bulb which changed the world and technology. When he installed a lighting system in New York, everyone thought that he was a wizard, and he was given the name, “Wizard of Menlo Park”. But behind this success was a lifetime of struggle. Edison failed about 999 times in his attempt to perfect the light bulb before he finally succeeded on the 1,000th attempt. About his failure and eventual success, he said: “I have not failed. I have just found 999 ways that do not work”. Imran Khan, the legendary cricketer of the past and the present successful politician and chairman of the third largest political party of Pakistan is one of the most famous personalities of Pakistan. His life is a good example of motivation, self-belief and struggle. He was the captain of the Pakistani team which won the 1992 World Cup. After accomplishing this goal, he focused his attention on developing the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital. It was the first of its kind in Pakistan. He travelled throughout Pakistan to collect funds for this project. He faced a number of problems but ultimately he succeeded in fulfilling his dream. But he did not stop there; he established his political party, named Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, on 25 April 1996. At first it was a failed political party or in other words it was a one-man show. People laughed at him and criticized him for putting his honor at stake. But he continued his struggle for 17 long years and people saw that in the 2013 general election his party emerged as the third largest political party of Pakistan. He wrote in his book: “All the truly great people in history – Jinnah, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela - have had a vision and ambition beyond themselves. Often achieving more than others not because of more talent but because they had bigger ambitions and selfless dreams”. Soichiro Honda, the founder of the Honda automotive company, went for a job interview at the Toyota company. He was rejected but Honda did not lose heart. He created his own company called Honda to compete with Toyota. Bill Gates' idea of a computer with graphical interface and a mouse was rejected by a company and the papers of the project were thrown in his face. But due to his constant struggle, he is today the richest person in the world. Stephen King's first novel was a complete failure. It was rejected everywhere. He was so disappointed that he threw copies of the novel in the garbage. But his wife consoled him and he started writing again. And in the end, he became the famous novelist we know now. All of us know Thomas Edison, Imran Khan, Bill Gates, Soichiro Honda and Stephen King and we want to be successful like them. But we fail because we don't know what it takes to be successful. We just see the final result, which is the successful person, but we don't have any idea about the long struggle to achieve success. So if we want to succeed in our life, we need motivation. Motivation is the process that initiates, guides and maintains goal-oriented behavior. It causes us to take action. There are three major components to motivation: activation, persistence and intensity. Activation is the decision to initiate a behavior. Persistence is the continued effort toward a goal even though there may be obstacles in the way. Intensity is the concentration and vigor to achieve the goal. So we should never lose hope, and should always continue our struggle. Life is full of challenges. We will have rejections, we will have failures. We will get a lot of negative feedback from others. There will be a lot of things to block the road we wish to travel. But we should never give up. Believing in ourselves is the key to success. In Norman Vincent Peale's words: “Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy”. So get motivation, believe in your abilities, struggle to achieve your goal and live a happy and successful life.
