By Rehman Asif

My most optimistic expression towards life—life is a beautiful gift once awarded with no rewind button and it can be more beautiful by your hard work, passion, honesty and modesty with beings. Everybody thinks that there are some easier ways and hacks to live a successful life, no need to work hard for livelihood but the truth is that easier ways are always be the toughest ways.

I always like to share with my students, colleagues and in general discussion about my personal experiences and blessings;I was endowed throughout the way of my life. I started my professional life after my graduation from bottom of the line. Whatever I learned from my peers, teachers, books and parents always remain hand in glove with me in my decisions to deal with the practicality of life. Even I would like to share that my vision, my goals and my enthusiastic narrative towards life was beyond my capacity at that time. But I never ever left the way to achieve success despite of the long and tough route. A general notion prevails in our society follows that we always look for the shortcuts to achieve success, but success can be achieved by only hard work and true dedication towards your work. This way is, off course, predicated with windy, tumultuous and precariousmenaces and it takes some little more time to get success, but in the long run, the reward is yours. It is very well demarcated by Rober Frost in his famous poem “The Road not Taken”that I took the less travelled by, And that has made all the difference”.

We should always keep in mind that temporary things have temporary outcomes with limited virtues.

“Nothing worth having comes easy”, we all have often come across these lines, but how many of us have experienced the truth behind these lines? In life we all set some goals, some may be far-fetched some may be for the near future, but to achieve these goals, it is important that how much we work with our heart and soul. These shortcuts seem so accessible because of continuous lose in life which takes our hopes, steadfastness and patience with them and made our target unachievable.

So many people are in such a hurry to success that they eagerly take any shortcut that come across their way. In reality, shortcuts usually lead to disappointments rather than quicker success. The key to any long-term success is to take necessary steps to steadily progress rather than skip any of them. This would be true whether the goals are financial or so in all our endeavors, that is what we all want but, most of us forget that for success, the road is not strewn with roses. The walk is not a cakewalk, nor is it a gift on a platter rather success is an achievement by constant diligence and toiling of day and night but most of us fail to achieve because we  lack the essential quality of meticulousness.

The magic of hard work and perseverance cannot be underestimated. We see in general that people who have succeeded in life have done an immense amount of hard work and their success is their reward, but we fail to measure their efforts. Most of us make efforts but lose heart sooner and leave the quest, resultantly, we badly fail to reach the pinnacle of success.

Hard work will give you inner peace; it will give you a sense of satisfaction that you had put in; to achieve your goals. Never shy and shrink from hard work, and you know what the best part about hard work is? You never lose anything. Life will put you in tests when you will have the options of choosing between shortcut and hard work, the selection of shortcut will give you all the world’s tempting offers but don’t get swayed away by it, it is just a trap which will make you fall into a deep pit from where it would be difficult to come back. Hard work will give you many experiences; it will make you a stronger and a better person. So here is a strange dichotomy; on the one hand we wish a permanent success, while on the other hand, we seek temporary methods to achieve success.Therefore, I totally agree by the quote of Michael Jordan that there are no shortcuts to success.