We must remember that pain is just the other side of joy. If you avoid all possibilities to pain, you also block all avenues of happiness. It is like writing an examination. If you want to be absolutely sure that you don’t fail, you don’t write the examination. However, by doing so, you also block all your chances of success.

If you wish to be happy, you have to choose happiness over wealth, power, success or fame. You have to accord happiness the highest priority in life.

Even if you do nothing, say nothing and be nothing, there will still be many who will criticise you. It is much better to be criticised for success than be condemned for failures because success rids you of the many miseries of life.

Even if you do nothing, say nothing and be nothing, there will still be many who will criticize you. It is much better to be criticized for success than be condemned for failures because success rids you of the many miseries of life.

Most people lead miserable lives because in their attempt to win the rat race, they try to excel in the area for which they don’t have the potential. Hence, they fail not only in achieving success, but end up making their lives miserable as well.

Most motivational speakers typically use anecdotes rather than statistics to prove their point. They don’t speak about the thousands of failures of millions of hapless men and women but always tell the story of one successful person to prove their point. They make great promises akin to a good salesman out to sell his wares. Many people follow their advice and unfortunately discover that they still are not able to achieve the promised success.

We start feeling uneasy as soon as the initial euphoria or happiness from our achievement fades away. We then raise the bar further so that we can strive more and achieve even higher success thereby deliberately making ourselves unhappy. However, our lifelong chase of success only gives us suffering and unhappiness.

If integrity is considered a virtue, it may be because most people lack integrity. Also, as only a few succeed in their pursuits, some may link failure with a lack of integrity. But this is not fully true. When you reason it out, you might conclude that honest people are more likely to fail and the dishonest rise faster.

While failure is important for success, take only as much failures as you can afford to, without losing all your happiness. Failing more than what you can withstand is a recipe for suffering.