9th August 2010
"A great deal of talent is lost in the world for want of a little courage…The fact is that to do anything in the world worth doing, we must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can."
Sydney Smith
The most important investment anyone can think of is courage. In fact this investment cannot be from outside but has to be generated from within. Without courage, no matter what other investment we may have, we will not get what we want to get. Read the biography of any successful person. This is what you will see. Everyone fails. But the successful one learns from failure and corrects himself. The not so successful person gives up.
The most successful person has failed most number of times. The most successful organizations have failed a number of times. This is what the history of Ford says. This what the story of Konosuke Matsushita, the founder of National Panasonic company. He was born in an affluent family, but the family lost all the money die to a bad investment his father did on rice speculation. But that did not stop Konosuke Matsushita from venturing into business.
Art Fry invented the Post It note pads, but the product was not welcomed. Never the less, Art Fry continued to hand over the product to several people until it became a grand success by 3M. When Walt Disney was sacked for want of creativity, his courage never let him down. This is also what we learn from the life history of Mahatma Gandhi.
Anyone can give you outside help. But you only can give yourself internal courage.
Here's a weekend exercise. Think about some project you gave up due to some fear and take up the same project once again. Imagine you are Konosuke Matsushita, or Henry Ford or Art Fry or Mahatma Gandhi. Look at the same project through their eyeballs and see what happens to your reservoir of courage!
N C Sridharan
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