Life is not always what you want it to be. Not all your wishes come true, not all your desires are fulfilled. If it was otherwise, everyone would have turned into a millionaire overnight. It is important to dream, but it is also important to be grounded. It is important to stay close to reality and plan everything, anything practically. Only when you can set realistic goals and work towards it, can you truly succeed.

So far, I have gathered some important lessons from my own experiences. Living a meaningful life is a matter of choice. Fundamentally, we should not be afraid of challenges and we should not fear failure. There is no need to pursue perfection. We should not let the fear of ‘bad performance’ hold us back, ever. Interestingly, someone has said, “Take risks: if you win, you will be happy; if you lose, you will be wise.”

After all, life is all about beautiful game, sometimes we win and sometimes we don’t. This is how it works; this is how it has always worked. Victory and defeat are part and parcels of life.

However, it goes without saying that it is important to dream. Like they say, life without a goal is like a race without finish line.

Waking up every day without a desire to fulfill or an aim to catch up to is completely useless. It doesn’t matter what you are doing, it doesn’t matter how big or small your goal is, but you need something to look forth to. You need a purpose in your every day. And that purpose you must meet with utmost sincerity.

Life certainly consists of struggles to bear. However, the fear of having to endure pain won’t lead us anywhere. Hustling is what keeps us alive. The success we achieve is no accident. Living an incredible life is no accident. You have to do it on purpose. And it starts by knowing exactly what is it that you want to achieve, knowing why you want to achieve it, knowing the kind of person that you need to become in order to make it happen, and then programming your mind to make it happen. With just one life ahead of us that consists of so much to achieve, it is only smart to start now.

Time after time, failure after failure, we gain some precious experiences. These experiences are important because they help us make right decisions in the future. Or teach us what we did wrong in the past. Most importantly, success comes from right decisions and right decisions come from bad experiences.

Wagle is a recent graduate from Pokhara University