SECRETS TO A SUCCESSFUL LIFE — Qualities Required

If you remain inwardly calm and composed at all times, you will be able to survive the heat of any external circumstances, and then you can safely reach your destination. If you face someone’s hate and anger, you must not let it get under your skin. Instead, you should try to feel forgiveness in the depth of your heart. Even if the whole world wishes you evil, you should still have only good feelings for others. There is no other way of succeeding in life. If, on the other hand, you adopt the same negative feelings as prevail in your outside environment, the challenges of life are sure to be more than you can bear. Conquering Oneself Edmund Hillary, born on July 2, 1919, in Auckland, New Zealand, showed an early interest in mountaineering. He started by climbing mountains in his own country, and later, in 1951, attempted, along with a team, to scale the heights of Mount Everest, a 29,028 foot high peak in Nepal. This attempt was not successful. Then, for the second time, in 1953, he again set out to climb it with a British team. His guide in this venture was a Nepali, Tenzing Norgay. Reaching the summit of Mount Everest on May 29, 1953, he became the first person to set foot on the highest point of the globe. He immediately became famous all over the world, and received a knighthood on July 16 of the same year. We will not be able to survive crises in life if we let our inward condition become as highly charged as the outward situation that we are confronted with. He subsequently wrote a book on this mountaineering exploit, published in 1955 under the title, High Adventure. One of the lessons of this book is: “It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.” This sounds very simple, but it is a remark of great profundity. It would be true to say that every victory in this world is the result of conquering one’s own self. Each conquest necessarily entails a hard struggle. But, first and foremost, the aspirant to success must prove himself equal to that initial struggle, and then he must show his unflagging determination to reach his ultimate goal. Only then will the world acclaim him as a conqueror. Be it mountaineering or any other exploit, man has first to pass the test of a hard struggle. He must then prove that he is capable of exercising patience and restraint. The day a man furnishes proof of this ability is