Success is neither magic nor mysterious. Success is the natural consequence of consistently applying the basic fundamentals. Here are my ten basic fundamentals for success:

1. Think Positive:

When Pablo Picasso was a child, his mother said to him, “If you become a soldier, you will be a General; if you become a monk, you will end up as the pope.” Instead, he became a painter and wound up as Picasso. Moral of the story is that when doing anything in life, think success, not failure and avoid negative people. Picture yourself achieving success – even receiving awards. Your mind thinks it is a real event even if you are only thinking about it. It molds itself to success if you think success. When I was a child living in a small house in Delhi with 10 other family members, I used to dream of a very big house with a very large kitchen (I used to carry a picture of the White House). Today, I live in an 18,000 square feet house with a kitchen possibly bigger than the kitchen of White House. You lose nothing by thinking big and having impossible dreams and goals. Yet the advantage is that many times the dreams come true.

2. Decide your true dreams and goals:

Yogi Berra once said, “If you do not know where you are going, you might wind up some place else.” You can reach any goal-- if you know what the goal is. Your goals should be just out of reach but not out of sight. When you are motivated by goals that have deep meaning, by dreams that need completion, then you truly live. Whatever your goal, it should lead you to happiness, not just wealth. Write down your specific goal and develop a plan to reach it. If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail. Take your time in planning because better the planning, better will be the results. Discuss your plans with more experienced people in the field and let them find faults with your plans. Fine tune your plans before you begin to take action.

3. Take action:

Goals are nothing without action. Don’t be afraid to get started. Just do it. Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they do not quit. Don’t be afraid of failure. Failure is a part of success. Remember that real happiness comes from the process of going through the activity that takes you towards your goal. Once you have achieved your goal, actually the fun is over. Grown-up people know that fun in life is much more important than the money they will ever accumulate. So take action and have fun but do not hurt anybody in the process. If anybody gets hurt in the process, it will not be fun. Material success is far more satisfying when it comes without exploiting others. The true measure of a career is to be able to be content, even proud, that you succeeded through your own endeavors without leaving a trail of casualties in your way. So take action but a constructive one.

4. Never stop learning:

One secret of success is to know something nobody else knows. The other is learning to analyze details. Get all the facts, all the input. Learn from your mistakes. Better yet, learn from other people’s mistakes. Other people write their experiences (including their mistakes) – in the form of books. That is why reading books is so important. People who do not read good books have no advantage over people who can’t read them. Even if you have to go back to school or a college, learn to learn. Try to read all kinds of magazines and books and through them, find your passion. Get training and acquire skills that suite your personality. Do not worry about your older age, disability or any other hang-up – just continue to learn because there are three ingredients in the good life: learning, earning and yearning. You begin with learning and the others will follow.

5. Focus on your goal:

Do not let other people or things distract you. Keep your eye on the goal no matter what other say or do. A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him. Visualize achieving the goal you have set so clearly that it is almost life-like. Keep away from people who belittle your ambitions and goals. Little people always do that, but the great ones make you feel that you too can become great. It is no accident that things are more likely to go your way when you stop worrying whether you are going to win or lose, and focus your full attention on what is happening right at this moment. Eagles have strong vision. They have the ability to focus on something up to five kilometers away. When an eagle sites his prey, he narrows his focus on it and sets out to get it. No matter the obstacle, the eagle will not move his focus from the prey until he grabs it. So have a vision; remain focused and concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. Remember that the sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.

6. Develop self-confidence:

To be successful, you need knowledge plus a belief in yourself and your abilities to achieve your goal. However, you can only believe in yourself if you can first prove it to yourself that you have the ability to be successful. Well, I have discovered a method that really works. Simply find ways to help the helpless people in this world unconditionally and in secret. When you help a helpless person unconditionally, it improves his/her life to a certain degree. When you notice such a change, you begin to feel that you have the power to change things. Your self-confidence increases. You feel that you are in control and you begin to believe in your abilities. Because your actions are unconditional, you also feel very noble and begin to get the feeling of closeness to that higher power. For some reason, this has been a well-kept secret of good living. However, to really understand and achieve this power, you must try it in real life and you will discover that the grass is actually greener and the sky is bluer.

7. Practice persistence:

There is no doubt that most men succeed in life because they are determined to. Even people of mediocre ability achieve outstanding success because they do not know how to quit. This is because success is a marathon, not a sprint. So never give up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time. Do not be afraid of failure. Failure is actually good – if you persist, it always leads to success. It is giving up that is bad. No one ever became great except through many and great failures. Failure is a teacher, not undertaker. Failure is delay - not defeat. Success means going down many blind alleys and if it does not work, you start again. You must continue to ask questions, probing, pressing, pushing until you achieve success. Wilson Greatbatch, an electrical engineer who created cardiac pacemaker, wrote: "Don’t fear failure, and don’t crave success. Do not worry about whether an invention is going to be successful or not, or if it is going to make money or not. Just keep at it till you are a success." Many great people of past became great because of their habit of persistence. According to Estee Lauder, success is always based on persistence, not luck. According to Albert Einstein, failure is only postponed success. The habit of persistence is the habit of victory. You must never forget that the man who knocks persistently ends by entering. So keep knocking.

8. Learn to innovate:

Just because something has always been done in a certain way is never a sufficient reason for continuing to do it that way. Be different. Following the herd is a sure way to mediocrity. Innovation is when you suddenly understand something you have understood all your life, but in a new way. Always think outside the box. There is always another way of doing everything. Search for alternative solutions to problems that seem perplexing. Thomas Edison once said: “Reasonable things never work. So think up some unreasonable ones.”

9. Communicate with other people effectively:

The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people. Try to understand others, especially those who are much different from you. Ask their opinions. Discuss your problems with them. Ignore their negative points and look for their positive ones. Your aim is to learn from those positive points. A good student can learn from everybody on this earth. Everybody knows something you don’t. That is why it is so important to communicate with others. Actually your destiny is determined by the way you communicate with others. Only way to learn art of communication is to begin communicating ASAP and continue the effort no matter what the results are. Sooner or later you will be the master of communication and that is when you will find success.

10. Be honest and dependable:

Whenever you do a thing, act as if all of the world was watching. Integrity is not 90% or a 95% thing; either you have it or you don’t. Integrity means when you say you will do something, you do it. Your credibility in business and in personal life is worth more than anything you can put in the bank. Your good reputation is your richest jewel. It is all about having the respect of your loved ones and gaining the respect of people in the professional and business worlds so you can build and improve on relationships. That is why a man’s character is his fate. Oliver W. Holmes Jr., former Supreme Court chief justice once said, “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared with what lies within us.” Honest hearts produce honest actions. That is why, if you have lost your honesty, you have nothing else to lose. So take responsibility for your actions and develop self-respect by staying honest with yourself and others. Otherwise, numbers 1-9 will not matter.