Dr. S CHAKRABORTY
Success is what everybody wants in every sphere of life and failure is abhorred, something that nobody wants. I would like to press for a discussion on one of the aspects of success, a part more related with my field. Let’s start with two analogy;
1)When Mike Tyson , the infamous heavy weight champion returned to boxing ring, his promoter made him to fight against a lesser fighter, whom he could defeat with his hands tied to back. But still he fought and won in 90 seconds. Subsequently he went ahead and challenged bigger challengers like Frank Bruno and regained his heavy weight title by defeating him.
2) The premier football clubs of Europe exposes their talented upcoming players initially to lesser clubs so that they can score more and taste success.
Both are examples of’ Winner effect’. Whenever somebody tastes success for the first time, it leads to tremendous changes in ones brain. It forms new neural circuits, activates older one , increased exchange of information between right and left half of brain and more importantly activates that part of brain which is involved in out of the box thinking, gut feeling, intuition and creativity. It also stimulate our frontal region of brain involved in making quick on the foot decisions. So first success acts as springboard and makes the person prepared and equipped for more success eventually. He starts to behave like a successful person and brain just augments it. He makes wise decisions, has more haunches, picks up winners among pack of losers etc. And for that, the quantum of success doesn’t matter. So a Rs 100 profit in first business will have the same winner effect as that of a Rs 1 crore profit. It also changes the attitude of that person and makes him more mentally resilient so that failures which are always just round the corner, will be handled maturedly. Failure no longer remains fatal. Rather it becomes a good teacher with loads of lessons.
Winner effect is increasingly recognized because it could be used by every body, from student preparing for entrance exams to a wannabe entrepreneur. All this is because of tremendous research being done on neuroplasticity , which suggests the enormous ability of brain to undergo transformation\change at any age. Gone are those concepts which states that brain doesn’t grow beyond first year if life. Now its principle is ‘Use it to fatten it or leave it to shrunk it’. Neuro plasticity explains the power of positive thoughts on physical structure of brain by remodeling it. In practice we see huge difference in the recovery of two patients of same sided paralysis, receiving same treatment but with different attitude towards their condition and about life in general. Not only positive people responds quickly but objectively as well their brain scan differs with appearance of alternative and new neural circuit.
First failure on the contrary could be detrimental unless you are part of a society where risk taking and entrepreneurship is encouraged. Though it could be harnessed and can act as a motivator but a overwhelming majority fails to recover unless receives strong support from family and friends. For example the first international cricket game of Saurav Ganguly in Australia was a disaster. He just disappeared, soaked up all the ridicule and criticism for three years and made a strong come back with debut century at Lords cricket ground.
Take home message; Winner effect is a fact. Anybody can harness it. So instead of diving headlong in your venture, allow yourself a taste of success by hand picking a relatively easy project at the outset.
Well it is very true. Loved reading it.