The quote you see in the title is what Stan Wawrinka, a Swiss Tennis player got tattooed on his arm after he won his first Grand Slam title at the Australian Open, 2014 against Novak Djokovic, after losing to him in their previous 14 encounters. It embodies the quote, “You fail when you refuse to get back up” perfectly. That's exactly what motivates me when I am faced with a failure, or prospective failure so big and intimidating that it crushes me, almost, but never completely.
It was May, 2017, my first crack at the Chartered Accountancy exams. It was the moment I was waiting for since 5 years of first filling the form for entrance exams of the curriculum in 2012. I was sitting in the exam hall, anxiously waiting for the question paper to arrive. And here it came, with mysteries hidden inside the sealed question paper. As it turned out, mysteries they were as I was unable to comprehend and interpret the complex set of questions that appeared before me. I was distraught. 5 years of waiting and relentless efforts, I could see them all going down the drain.
A single poor performance had a bearing on my overall marks and, as it turned out, I had to reappear for 4 papers of Chartered Accountancy again, 6 months later. Now, I had 2 options. First, to sob and play the entire scenario in my head, wishing I had somehow performed better. Or the second, to get back up, dust myself off and take what’s mine, the CA degree for which I’d been working tirelessly to achieve. Regardless to say, it was the second option that I chose and I got back up and studied again with twice the intensity, because that’s what it would take to achieve what I’d always wanted.
According to Mr. Kumar Mangalam Birla, Chairman of Aditya Birla Group, “Failure is not fatal, it is inevitable”. I took these words as my inspiration and guiding light and didn’t let this failure stop me from getting to what I want. And that’s what happened come January 2018. I was Naman Jain no more. Now, I was CA Naman Jain.