Aim for excellence, Success will Follow

Just came back from watching the move 3 Idiots and changed the subject of my blog. The original intention was to write on GDP, its growth and measurement but decided to take up the challenge of writing a contra blog on the 3 Idiots.

The reason I say challenge is because the movie is nice good entertainment, acting of Madhavan, Sharman Joshi and Kareena is good and the message is very clean and presented in a detailed manner. The key messages are:

- Aim for excellence and success will follow
- Don't decide what your child should do in life
- Do what you love and your work will be enjoyment
- Remove the marks and the grading system and the race for ranks
- Encourage students to learn, experiment and explore and not to just acquire knowledge that has already been discovered.

So, if I am saying all good things about the movie, what is the challenge in writing the blog. The challenge was in finding what was wrong with the movie.

I think the acting of Aamir Khan and Bomman Irani wasn't that good. In fact, I think Aamir over-acted in the film. You could feel that success has gone to his head and his acting showed that attitude. Probably not everyone may feel the same way and I am not saying this just because this is supposed to be a contra blog. I am saying Aamir needs to be careful of not allowing success to go to his head. I am a fan of Aamir Khan and his movies and see him in the role that was played by Kamal Hassan of experimenting with each role and doing things nobody would think possible. In fact the best credit that could be given to Aamir was the Toyota advertisement which showed Aamir in many roles.

Not allowing success to go to your head is the unsaid message of the movie and which I am trying to bring out through this blog. That when we aim for excellence and success follows, so does our ego and ego feeds on success. Success corrupts us and bloats our ego and prevent future and further excellence and success.

Then starts the downward spiral. Where we become parasites. Taking credit for the success of others. Could be our staff, our peers, chance success and so on. Where we are no longer aiming for excellence but start aiming for success since the ego needs a continuous stream of success to remain alive. It does not have the patience to wait for long term success which could come from pursuing your goals. People should praise you, newspapers should carry your names, you are the only one entitled to promotions and not others and it manifests in so many other ways.

Aamir needs to be careful of this and so should we.