If Your Aim Is Not to Attain Buddha-hood, Why Not Aim for Material Success?

You may be aspiring to become wealthy, your ambition may be to grow in your career, or you may want to beat the competition in your industry and become the numero uno in the field. These mundane desires and attaining Buddha-hood can not co-exist. Therefore, it is not necessary that you should worry about reaching that saintly stage or something parallel to it that may need complete renunciation. It is enough if you focus on the task on hand, that is accumulating wealth, achieving the career growth you want, or climbing to the top position in your industry. But how to accomplish these aims? Let us find out.

If you observe how a champion player proceeds with his Chess game, you will observe that he will aim to make tiny gains on the board. As the game proceeds, these tiny gains will culminate into a huge win. Similarly, you should always work for making small gains. This rule is applicable to everyone, regardless of whether they are entrepreneurs or employees, or whether they want to make huge money. But you can not ignore one particular aspect and that aspect is spelled as HURDLES. It appears that hurdles work in complete conformity with the theory of "practical socialism" because they do not spare anyone. The point that is being driven home is that you will also face hurdles when you work for making gains, irrespective of whether they are small or big. 

Are hurdles real?

Yes. Hurdles are real but most of the time, it is you who creates such hurdles. What are the things you do that create such hurdles? There will certainly be hurdles if you lack integrity if you are greedy, and are selfish. On the other side of the spectrum, if you want to satisfy everyone, you will be creating hurdles for yourself. 

If you lack integrity, others will find it out soon and the edifice of credibility you have toiled and built over the years will come down crumbling. If you are an employee, you may even lose your job. If you are an entrepreneur, you will lose customers, and if you are a person who aspires to accumulate wealth, you will not only not be able to become rich but will lose whatever you already have as well. So will be the results if you are greedy or selfish. 

If you commit the mistake of trying to satisfy everyone, you will be running a race that may never seem to end and ultimately, you will succumb to the pressure and collapse. 

Therefore, if you do not want hurdles to derail your efforts, you should avoid committing these mistakes at all costs.

There are two other things that may decelerate your progress and they are stress and not being persistent in your efforts. Remember that getting obsessed with your aims can cause stress. If you do not learn to manage stress, that itself will prove to be disastrous. Of course, you must make the best possible efforts to implement your plans but at the same time, you should have excellent back-up plans also.  The best advantage of having such back-up plans is that you can afford to be nonchalant and take steps to implement those alternative plans.

As pointed out earlier, not being persistent enough can be a retardant as well. Your purpose should be firm and you should keep the flag flying till you achieve what you want.