Acharya Prashant explains that the right goal is one that breaks your inner weaknesses. Whatever needs to be eliminated within you, you should set a goal that finishes it. He refers to a saying by Carl Jung, "Where your fear is, there is your task!" This means your work lies where your fear is. First, you must see your inner fear, your weakness, your filth, and your lies. Once you see them, it is determined where your work is, and that will become your goal. You must choose the work that breaks your inner weaknesses. Success, he elaborates, should be determined by the challenges you faced while taking steps toward your goal. What were the difficulties you faced? Your journey against those difficulties will decide whether you are successful or not. He provides an example from his time at IIT, where he was surprised to see a large number of students from Delhi, which has a small percentage of the country's population. Many of these students from Delhi had very high ranks. He argues that a student from a small town in Odisha with a rank of 1800 is more successful than a student from Delhi with a rank of 18. The reason is that the boy from Odisha, who is doing everything on his own, might not have even had access to the right books, whereas the boy from South Delhi comes from an upper-middle-class family with every resource available. Success cannot be judged merely by where one has reached; it must be measured against the odds. It is about how many challenges you faced to move forward, how much you have won, how much effort you have put in, and how thorny your path was. That will determine how successful you will be called. He criticizes the pride taken in unearned achievements, such as inheritance, stating that many of the world's biggest problems exist because power, strength, and wealth are in the hands of those who are not worthy of them, who got them without earning them. Whatever you have received without a fight, without effort, do not consider yourself successful on that basis. Circumstances have a very big contribution to what you have received, and what you get due to circumstances is not your success.
