Understanding Success 101: Everything You Wanted To Know What is understanding The word understanding has two definitions ‘ the ability to understand something ’ and ‘ sympathetic awareness or tolerance ’. Both these definitions are equally important if we want to succeed in life. Doing some work without fully understanding it is meaningless. This is illustrated very evidently in Saint Augustine’s experience. As Saint Augustine, the great theologian, walked by the seashore one day thinking about how God could be three persons at once, he came across a child engaged in an unusual task. The child had dug a hole in the sand and was filling it with water from the ocean. He would go to the ocean fill his seashell with water and then come and empty the water in his hole. After watching the child for some time, Saint Augustine asked him, ‘What are you trying to achieve?’ Sweating and panting, the child replied, ‘I am trying to put the ocean in my hole.’...