Success is the fullness of this moment || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2013)

Questioner (Q): What is success for us? What do you mean by a successful person?

Acharya Prashant (AP): Let us try to understand this. Look at the statement carefully. When I say, “I want success,” what am I saying? If I want success, then surely I am not successful right now. Remember, all success that you want is a success of future. When you say that you want success, what you mean is that at some point in the time ahead, you will get something which will make you feel successful. Am I right? That is how you think?

By wanting success, you have already declared yourself to be a failure right now. Have you not? You are saying, (Referring to the present time) “This is where I am, I am unsuccessful. This is where I want to be in the future; if I get there I will be successful.” We do not know what this point is (future), where does it lie, whether you will get there or not. All that is uncertain. But what is certain is that you have labelled yourself to be a failure right now. How many of you want to declare that right now you are a failure? How many of you are interested in doing that? “Right now I am a nobody, an unworthy being, a failure.” How many of you want to say that?

(Silence, no reply)

But then, how many of you want success?

(Smiles) All of you want success without understanding what ‘wanting success’ means. To want success is to say that I am a failure. “I will be successful, but I am a failure.” Now is that a pleasant state of mind to live in? And the more hungry and thirsty for success you are, the bigger a failure you have declared yourself to be in the present. Now, when are you living, in the future or in the present?