Acharya Prashant addresses the issue of feeling disheartened by failure when pursuing a meaningful task. He clarifies that the problem is not with the intellect, but with the expectation of immediate success. When you engage in a task like research, there are two possible outcomes. One is that you get disheartened and your intellect stops working when you don't understand something. The other possibility is that if you truly need to do something and it's not happening, your intellect becomes even more intensely involved in it. Your reaction to failure depends on the value you assign to the work. If you face defeat, two types of reactions can arise from within. One is to think, 'I failed because I am incapable, so I will not try further.' The other is, 'I have failed, so now I will try twice as hard.' Which reaction you have depends on the value you give to the work you are doing. If you have given the work only a conditional value—that it's fine as long as it's done with little effort—then you will not put more effort into it. This means the work doesn't hold much importance for you. But if you truly value the work, you will not become indifferent to it or abandon it. This is a matter of valuation. The expectation you hold is based on how you value the work. If you know the work is immense, you won't expect it to be completed quickly. Conversely, if you consider the task small, you expect it to be done quickly and feel it's an injustice if it isn't. Therefore, do only the work that is worth doing, that you value from the heart; this is called love. If you don't value it, you cannot put your life into it, and your heart will break easily. Authenticity never feels compelled or helpless; helplessness is for those who fear losing something. The authentic self, the soul, cannot be compelled. Choose a task that is so vast it can never be completed in your lifetime, so your entire life can be spent immersed in it. That work is internal; work on yourself. Then, the work and the worker will end together.
