Lifestyle

Why Fear, Not Luck, Is The Greatest Motivation For Success

by Gurbaksh Chahal

“Everything starts with a dream, a particle of our imaginations that teases us of what the future could be like, as long as we fight for it.”

"Did you get lucky?"

Whenever someone asks me this, I’m never offended, because for the most part, people only see the headlines and forget the hard work, discipline, sacrifice and struggle one commits to his or her journey. I believe one of the key headstarts I did have was my youth. It allowed me to overcome fear.

I believe that fundamentally, we go through three stages of fear:

As a Child we’re Fearless As an Adult we become more Fearing And, as we get Elderly we become even more Fearful

As the saying goes, you can throw a kid in the water, and eventually, he or she will learn how to swim. But, if you throw an adult in the water, he or she may scare him or herself into drowning.

Throughout youth, our propensity for risk and failure go hand-in-hand. I consider this a pivotal moment in our lives in which we can define what drives us, what our inner passions are and what we eventually want to strive to become.

As a kid, I enjoyed watching CNBC and fell in love with the opportunities of the Internet. That led me to take my greatest entrepreneurial risk of dropping out of high school to start my first venture.

Today, I see kids who go to high school and college, but even after getting a degree, they still don’t know what they want to do and ultimately, allow society to dictate their futures.

According to this article, more than 17,000,000 Americans with college degrees have jobs that only require high school skills.

Life gets more complicated as we get older. Our decisions are derived from what society, our families and responsibilities influence us to do. As we mature further into adulthood, we tend to worry more. This means we end up doing things to survive rather than to enrich our lives.

So, do I believe I got lucky? Absolutely. I feel fortunate that at a young age I figured out that I loved the world of business. The only secret behind this discovery is to listen to your heart. We tend to do well at the things we love, so find something you love – or learn to love what you're doing. 

Check out this video for even more inspiration:

Read more at Chahal, Photo credit: Batman