The SUCCESS 6 Formula - Invincibility: Power To Overcome any Situation

 

Power

Invincibility: Power To Overcome any Situation 

“If I have to, I can do anything. I am strong, I am invincible, I am Woman.” 

— Helen Reddy, singer

“Inner strength can overcome anything that occurs outside.” 

— I Ching

Invincibility is partly about having confidence and the winning attitude. This is very important. While confidence would not guarantee success, lack of confidence certainly guarantees failure. Invincibility is also about cultivating leadership qualities. In Sun Zi’s The Art of War, these qualities are called the virtues of a general.

What has this to do with studies and examinations? At first, it may not seem much. But these qualities are important for everyone in every situation, including students, as they build your strength of character. They give you an inner strength so that external challenges and difficulties won’t get you down. They help you rebound from setbacks and even failures. As a result, you will not be easily defeated. Eventually, you will triumph.

According to Sun Zi, the five virtues of a general are:

• Wisdom 

• Sincerity 

• Courage 

• Strictness 

• Benevolence

These five virtues bring us a life of fulfillment. Cultivating invincibility thus helps us discover a lifetime FULFILLMENT formula.

Wisdom

In this Information Age, knowledge is easy to come by. If you need to know about something, just do an Internet search. You will likely find lots of information about it, even if it is an obscure subject. You might also find contradictory and false information. Thus, you need wisdom to know which information to accept, and which to reject.

Wisdom is not just about knowledge and understanding. These qualities will obviously help you in your studies and examinations. But more than that, you need to know what is true and what is right in order to make good judgments.

Let’s say you planned to spend the night studying, but your friends invite you out. Should you go? Or say you feel tired and sleepy. Should you take a break, or force yourself to study? There is no fixed rule for such situations. Sometimes, you really do need a break, but you also need to discipline yourself. With wisdom, you will know when to push yourself, and when to relax.

Wisdom does not always come from school education. It comes more from having experienced life and from listening to the advice of people, usually the elderly, who have the experience.

As a young student, you may not have a lot of life experiences. But you learn along the way. You may find, for example, that every time you give yourself a break, you end up taking a much longer break than you intended. Or that every time you force yourself to study no matter how tired you are, you end up not being able to concentrate.

Such experiences should help you strike a good balance between forcing yourself and taking things easy. You learn from your experiences and mistakes, and gain in wisdom.

Sincerity

For students, sincerity obviously means not cheating in assignments or examinations. It goes beyond that, however, and covers your daily interactions with teachers and fellow students as well. Most of all, you need to be sincere with yourself.

Courage

Are you afraid of your teachers and lecturers? Are you even afraid of some of your classmates? Do you have the courage to answer questions without being asked? Or are you afraid of appearing foolish if you give the wrong answer?

The greatest courage involves facing yourself, being responsible for yourself and ultimately, being yourself. This is moral courage.

Often, we are afraid to reveal the truth because we worry that others might react negatively. But when they see that we are genuinely facing difficulties and that we sincerely want to do well, they will usually be understanding. Even if they were to react negatively, any unpleasantness would most likely be short-lived. It is better to just bear with it than to carry the burden of having to hide the truth.

Strictness 

“In reading the lives of great men, I found that the first victory they won was over themselves — self-discipline with all of them came first.” 

— Harry S. Truman, former US President 

Personal victory is the most important victory that must be won. It comes first and foremost. Before you can gain victory over someone else or over a situation (such as your examination), you need to gain victory over yourself. This comes with self-discipline, or strictness.

strictness strengthens character and helps us succeed. When you look at the lives of successful people, you will find that they all impose strict codes on themselves. Such codes might concern the allocation of time, such as setting aside time to study, or they might involve daily routines such as daily exercises or meditation.

If, as a student, you are able to adhere to a strict routine, you will set aside enough time to study and find that you still have time for recreational activities to provide balance to your life.

Benevolence

As human beings, we all need each other. When we are benevolent towards others, we may not immediately benefit. But benevolence is not about expecting benefits — we extend it from the goodness of our hearts. Directly or indirectly, that kindness will come back to us. This virtue seems the least related to studies and examinations. Still, it can play an important part.

 Author

-George Tan