Maulana Wahiduddin Khan | Speaking Tree Website | August 22, 2016

Bill Gates (b. 1955) is an American business magnate who co-founded Microsoft. He is consistently ranked in the Forbes list of the world's wealthiest people. Gates once said: "I failed in some subjects in exams, but my friend passed in all. Now he is an engineer in Microsoft and I am the owner of Microsoft."

Why this difference between two persons? The reason is that success inculcated the thought in the mind of Gates' friend of having reached his destination. Therefore, his struggle ended there. He obtained a service and began to lead a normal life.

Bill Gates' failure, however, gave him an incentive. His failure motivated him to accomplish more and more to obtain what he had failed to achieve on the university campus. It was this psyche of Bill Gates that made him a hero and finally he emerged as a great name in business.

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There are ample such examples in history that tell us that those who faced failure in their initial years, emerged as super-achievers in their later years.

In life, success and failure are relative. The message of success is: you have achieved what you wanted to achieve. This kind of thought paralyses the mind. It leads to intellectual stagnation. It tells you that time of hard work is over and now you can lead a comfortable life. While the message of failure is different. It tells you that you have not yet reached the destination and you have to try again by exerting more energy.