Bill Gates, the owner of famous Microsoft, and recently praised for the welfare efforts of his foundation Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to fight diseases in third world countries, is very well known all over the world for his organizational success, wealth and hard work. Late Steve Jobs, the former CEO of Apple, got worldwide fame for his success, wealth and unique ideas in the field of communication and information technology.
Carlos Slim, owner of many businesses and a telecommunication giant in Latin America is one of those who quickly reached to the title of one of the world's richest and most successful business figures. Their lives are ideal for every businessman and woman and there are millions of energetic people in the world who want to be like them.
They try to think and act like them and be successful like them but only difference is that majority of these people want to be like them in the least possible time. We are too much confident of our abilities and spirit of our desire and thus we need success, at any rate and in the shortest time possible.
But if we analyze the lives of these successful people, we come to discover something absolutely different reality. With the exception of a very few, who inherited a good fortune from their parents or family and then worked hard to establish a business or career of their own, all of these successful men started from zero and faced a lot many difficulties in the beginning and none of them reached to present success without any troubles and failures.
Bill Gates was not so good at his studies in college but he had keen interest in the computers and things like these. When he started his company, he had money enough to rent a basement where he and his friends were found to be busy working on their ideas. These days were really tough for them as they had only passion in heart and ideas in mind, and except these, all the things were against them. Then, when they made their first product, it was not accepted and bought by any company and they suffered a lot by visiting different computer companies to sell it.
After passing a number of years in such disappointing conditions, they got their first success and then gradually, things turned into their favor and Microsoft became a giant in the computer industry, making Bill Gates the richest person on the planet.
Similarly, OrhanPamuk of Turkey is one of the most successful and famous writers of the world. Publishers wait for his new book and make him offers of millions of dollars to publish his books. His books are translated into almost all the major languages of the world and he was awarded with a Nobel Prize for literature in 2006.
But this success story was not always the same. When he wrote his first book, he kept visiting and pleading the publishers to publish the book for three years but no one agreed to publish the book of a new emerging writer. His life of sufferings and difficulties lasted for almost ten years until he was accepted as a successful writer.
Our young and energetic people who want to be successful and who have unique ideas in their minds, start work with an enthusiasm but when some time passes and they don't become successful, they think that they are unlucky and they have not been destined to be successful and thus they quit their efforts and their ideas and energies are wasted.
Important thing to understand is this; we must at least wait as other successful men of the world waited. No doubt, your ideas can be better than that of Bill Gates or Steve Jobs but these successful men also had unique ideas and great passion and they also waited for the good times to come.
There can be two types of strategies while waiting for the success. Some people, who have great passion to success make their attempt but when unsuccessful, get disappointed and surrender to defeat. While there are some who make their attempt but when unsuccessful, re-assemble all their desires and passion and wait for the success keeping the fire of desire burning in the heart.
They make attempts to success time and again and no matter how many times they fall, they again rise to make a fresh attempt with even greater energy and zeal. Allama Iqbal Lahori writes in one of the poems that, 'O eagle, don't be afraid of the harshness of the opposite wind, it just blows to make you fly in the higher skies'.
There is a very famous saying that, 'For those who want to dream success, nights are short, but for those who want to make their dreams come true, days are short'. It means that if one keeps busy in dreaming, he would dream the whole night and dream would not end but if one wants to make a dream come true, he would work so hard that the day would end but his work would not finish.
The magnitude of a success depends on two things; the dream and the effort. If you dream small, your effort would be small and the resultant success would also be small. On the other hand, if you dream big, you will have to extend even bigger effort and thus the success would be also marvelous. But it is a fact that all the men on earth can't dream big.
There are many things that stop us from dreaming big; fear of failure, criticism of people and of course, lack of confidence on our skills and abilities. But if one has the habit of taking a task like an obsession and working abnormally, he can definitely dream big and turn it into a reality.
Usually, people who dream big are laughed at and denoted to be crazy by people and when they work hard, people also take their style of working as abnormal. But then there comes a fact that with normal dreams and efforts, you would get normal results. For getting exceptional success, you will have to be exceptional in both thinking and working.
Successful people of today term the difficulties of yesterday as a blessing. Difficulties teach you so many things that could have never been learnt by any other way or mean. Difficulties make you discover your hidden abilities and make you more equipped with abilities and skills to fight them.
Had there been no difficulties, one could have never discovered and utilized many of his hidden abilities. Difficulties make you realize the importance of success. If one gets success without any effort, it is possible that he might never realize the importance of this success and lose it in the short period of time.
Difficulties bring maturity in your ideas and broaden your thoughts and make you more beneficial to the world and your fellow beings. In short, if people had no chance of getting these valuable lessons after passing through difficulties, they could have definitely shown willingness to pass through these by spending some money.
When gold is mined, it is not pure and clean and it is a big piece of an object that contains mud, stone and many other impurities. It is then washed many times to remove its impurities and heated several times to bring it into a valuable shape. When gold passes through all these difficult stages of burning and heating, then it gets its worth. Same is valid for humans who pass through the fire and heating of difficulties and then gold of their personality comes out in the most purified form.