India successfully landed a spacecraft on the Moon under its Chandryaan-3 mission. 1.4 billion Indians kept their eyes peeled for this historic moment. Loud cheers erupted across the country with the joys of the common folks knowing no bounds as the spacecraft made a successful touchdown on the lunar soil.
However, among these 1.4 billion eager folks, thousands of thought leaders, copywriters, social media marketers, and HR folks had their hands glued to their keyboards, sweating their brains to make this massive moment about themselves or their brand. The chief among this display of basking in reflected glory (BIRGing) was Lunar Landston.
Landston is famous among his followers for his unconventional self-help content which is realistic, vulnerable, and from the bottom of his heart. However, anyone with more than two working brain cells can tell that beneath this goody-two-shoes exterior lies a guy who shares generic self-help content, promotes Ponzi crypto schemes, and doesn’t portray himself as God because God is infallible, humans are not (Just makes it easy to ask for forgiveness after you fuck up on a grand scale).
To trendjack this massive image, Landston put his nose to the grindstone and doled out the following LinkedIn to make this formidable mission about himself.
Woohoo! As a proud Indian 🇮🇳, my chest is swelled up with pride as we all witness this century-defining moment. My ears echo with songs that describe India’s strength, resilience, and persistence. We have successfully landed 🚀 on the Moon 🌑, a feat very few countries have been able to do so successfully.
No matter how large or small, behind every project or mission, there are certain defining principles that guide its success. These are discreet rules that set a successful mission apart from a failed one (I don’t believe in the concept of failure, but bear with me here).
Let’s talk about these tacit principles, shall we?
1. There’s no such thing as a failure ❎: I dropped out from an Ivy League college from a hard-to-get-into post-graduate course. My first three ventures tanked. I couldn’t raise money for my fourth one, so I had to shut it down. I tasted success for the first time in my fifth startup.
Conventionally, Chandrayaan-2 failed in 2019. It didn’t reach its intended destination. Instead of making it an identity, ISRO learned from the past, rectified the mistakes, and the rest is history.
2. Set audacious goals 🎯: You can’t make it big unless you set goals that scare the living hell out of you. I could’ve easily settled for a high-paying corporate job right out of college. But I didn’t want to live a conventional lifestyle. That’s boring. I set goals that seemed difficult, downright impossible until they weren’t.
As someone aptly said, “Shoot for the Moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” Chandrayaan-3 aimed for the Moon and landed there. So, never be afraid to go for outrageous objectives. You never know!
3. Grit 🏋️: Grift, umm I meant grit is an underrated trait (I mixed grift and gift there). People who succeed in life have failed more often than they’ve seen tiny glimpses of success. They just didn’t know how to quit.
My startup journey was a school of hard knocks. I kept at it until my stars changed overnight. But it took plenty of years for the stars to change overnight. Till then, grit was the only thing I believed in.
You can say the same thing about the moon landing too! It must be a painful experience to witness what you’ve been working so hard on for years fails in an instant and you’re left with nothing. In dark times like these, you gotta pick up the pieces and rebuild your vision.
Remember, the road to greatness goes through the upward climb of grit.
4. Humility will take you places 🙏: You can be the smartest person in the room, but if you are arrogant, nobody will care for you. It’s the people who listen actively, work dedicatedly, and don’t let success get to their head, get ahead in life.
If you listen to the speeches of the experts who worked on the mission, you’ll get what I mean! Their expertise is second to none, yet their speaking oozed passion, commitment, and humbleness.
So, it won’t be wrong to say humility will take you places, sometimes even to the Moon!
5. Lead by example 🧑💼: So many times, we see people just talking yet achieving absolutely nothing. It’s the doer that moves the needle, not the talker. If you gotta achieve great things, you need to put your head down and let your work do the talking.
You may point out the duplicity here, but I choose to see it in a different way. Rather than a talker, I look at myself as a teller of life lived, experiences experienced, and lessons learned.
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To celebrate this unprecedented event, I’m giving a 30% discount on all my courses 📜. Use the coupon code 🎫 CHANDRAYAAN. It’s my way of giving life to your dreams 🧬 and wings to your aspirations 🦅. Icarus burned his wings by flying into the Sun, I’ll make sure that yours don’t.
Landston cracked his knuckles as he finished writing the post, waiting for the eventual viral status his post would attain, while listening to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon in the background. Even in times of such a momentous event, Landston wasn’t ready to put the Moon in the spotlight.
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