The Three Essentials for Success

A professor from Punjab University would drink tea from the same tea stall every day. The tea stall was run by a young boy named Jahangir.  One day, Jahangir asked the professor “can I be a successful man in life?” The professor laughed and answered, “Everyone in this world has the ability to be successful.”

Jahangir was surprised and asked, “How?”  The professor took out a piece of chalk and made 3 lines on the wall. In the first line, he wrote “hard work, hard work, and hard work”. In the second line, he wrote” honesty, honesty, and honesty”. On the third line, he wrote the word “skill” once.  After writing this the professor turned and looked at Jahangir. When he finally spoke he said. “Success has 3 steps. The first step is hard work. No matter who you are or where you are, a store, a factory, an office or a tea stall, if you work hard you will succeed. Your place of work should be the first to open and the last to close.”  

The professor said “Around us, 90 percent of people don’t work too hard. So, start working hard and you will come out of that 90 percent and join the group of 10 percent people eligible to becoming successful.

The second step is Honesty. Honesty is a package of four things, keeping your promises, never lying, meaning what you say, and accepting your mistakes.

After hard work, you should make honesty a way of living. When you promise something, keep your promise, you should never lie, and never compromise on your principals and ideals. And when you make mistake, admit it and learn from it.”

In business, 50 percent success comes from honesty. Hard work gives you 30 percent.  Now there is 20 percent success left. Skills will give you that remaining 20 percent success. The Professor told Jahangir that skills are only 20 percent and skills come at the end. Even you don’t have skills, hard work and honesty will allow you to be 80 percent successful. But skills alone cannot give you much. So, you have to start with hard work and live every moment of your life with honesty. Only then will your skills help you become successful. If you follow this rule, you will touch the sky.

 This world is full of skilled homeless people, and this world also has unskilled people with their own private jets.

Jahangir took a long breath and said, “I made those three lines made with chalk my religion. Now I’m 45 years old and I’m a millionaire. The wall from my tea stall and the three lines on that wall are still kept in my office. I look at them often and am grateful to the Professor. “

Adapted from Urdu.