“To be idle is a short road to death and to be diligent is a way of life; foolish people are idle, wise people are diligent.”

– Siddhartha Buddha
(from QuoteDB.com)

When I used Google’s service to search with the keyword “Principles of Success”, I found 78,100 results. According to such results, people said there are 17, 13, 10, 12, etc. principles of success. For Buddhist we have four principles of success that we can apply to all tasks.

The four principles of success has Pali name “Iddipada” which means pathways to success. To be successful we have to follow all of these four principles.

1. Chanda : having heart of zeal.

The starting point is to love or be interested in what you’re going to do. Should you don’t want or don’t like in what you’re going to do, how can you do it well? You probably “just do it”. It’s not enough for success. You have to be KEEN to do it.

2. Viriya: doing with effort.

First, you love to do it. Then you do it seriously. Be dilligent and do it with your best effort. You have presevarance and not abandon it though it’s a difficult task. Should you have no knowledge, you try hard to find it from sources or consult others.

3. Citta: committing oneself to the task.

This is all about dedication. You concentrate on what you’re doing. Think about it frequently. Do the task with care.

4. Vimansa: using wise investigation.

You often examine cause and effect, pro and cons, gains and loss, blah blah in what you’re doing. Do evaluating and use result of such process to improve your task via planning, testing or experimenting, and re-evaluating.

Whatever you are ie student, teacher, worker, staff, supervisor, manager, CEO, leader, etc. , it does not matter. Should you want to be succesful, just apply the Ittipada to your tasks.

(The italic phrases came from the book “A constitution for living” by P.A. Payutto)