The last few days I have been musing about what really is this thing called "success"?
What is this quest to find one's passion?
Does success bring happiness always?
Is our own success overshadowed by someone else's success?
Are these severely over-rated terms?
Have they destroyed what
we could have been?
All of us chase success and happiness. Given that, we need to deeply introspect as to how we define success in the first place. So many of us are probably "successful" but because our definition of success is flawed, we're either choking in self pity or oblivious to the fact that we are actually successful and it calls for a celebration.
If it can be safely assumed that man acts according to his deeply ingrained beliefs - I think that is where the trouble starts to brew. These beliefs or goals or value systems or moral framework get set right from the day one is born.
It is such a surreptitious process that one is not aware that our future is going to be so screwed. So, when you reach your 30s (most probably, for most people atleast) you wonder where you're headed. Almost everyone feels lost. Probably this is what is called midlife crisis. There's no trophy to run for. Life looks a little easier when there are trophies to run for. This would explain why a housewife feels very listless compared to a working woman. One has tangible goals - goals accepted by all and is chasing it. The other doesn't have such tangible goals and hence the pursuit and achievement of goals is a little less rewarding for many though that person is probably very successful and has every cause of celebration. Just the absence of goals or the aspiration for standardized goals can lead to desperation.
A very accomplished photographer posted a very disturbing post on FB.
"I'm 40 and I still wonder what my passion is!".If this person, who, has pursued photography all along and has achieved numerous awards and recognition, feels this way, where does it leave the rest of us?
Then there are the countless movies where an ordinary guy becomes hugely successful and earns the respect of his family and society. What if he was not "that" successful? We usually see movies where the struggling protagonist wins an award or gets into IIM or meets the President of India or becomes the best artist. Anything less than the first rank is not portrayed usually.
Thus, we have been constantly "fed" images of success. There are numbers associated with success. There is fame and recognition tied with the most common definitions of success. We all have bought those definitions sub-consciously and we're chasing those definitions. No wonder then that many of us do feel disappointed and vexed.
The next common myth is the "I need to find my passion" myth. I'm not sure how it happens with most people. How do you know when it happens? If you're pursuing something and you're happy with it, what makes you doubt that it may not be your passion? This singular quest has killed so many humans.While searching I hit upon this article, which almost precisely states the same thing.
"precisely how you arrive at your true calling is an intricate and highly individual dance of discovery." How do we find that this is our true calling? It's a combination of things, it's a huge discovery in itself and you may have to stumble multiple times before you hit that jackpot.
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/02/27/purpose-work-love/
At this juncture, some people's views may help us wade through the muddiness.
Alan Watts's -
"Find one's natural rhythm and feel the eternal in your bones."
Prof Mihaly's flow state -
"people are happiest when they are in a state of flow— a state of concentration
or complete absorption with the activity at hand and the situation. It
is a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing
else seems to matter."
These could be good starting points but again, these are someone else's definitions :-)
Then there are many super successful people who quit the jobs that made them successful - because they did not find meaning in them. If such stupendous success is devoid of meaning, what is the use of pursuing success? Why chase success and money?
http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-04-19/news/38648128_1_microsoft-india-identity-work
I wonder if these are over-rated things. Is success the goal in life? Does success guarantee happiness?
If so many successful people leave their successful jobs or even contemplate suicide, why are the rest chasing such success?
Another worrisome ingredient to the already confusing topic of success is - is success sweeter in comparison? Do we get a sense of self and "success" by comparing with others?
http://www.sadhguruonline.com/podcasts/living-free-of-comparison
Does our success feel less successful because it's not as glamorous as someone else whom we know?
Do most of us belittle ourselves all the time because we do not match someone's standard of success?
I can see this happening to a lot of people nowadays.
Constantly existing here in comparison with anyone else and feeling happy simply because you have what others don't - is such a poor way to live. - Sadhguru.
“Constantly
existing here in comparison with anyone else is an insult to your
Creator.” —Sadhguru - See more at:
http://www.sadhguruonline.com/podcasts/living-free-of-comparison#sthash.qlEI2QZx.dpuf
“Constantly
existing here in comparison with anyone else is an insult to your
Creator.” —Sadhguru - See more at:
http://www.sadhguruonline.com/podcasts/living-free-of-comparison#sthash.qlEI2QZx.dpuf
Today I read about Uber being a 40bn dollar company and a relatively unknown shared cab service in Gaza.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/07/gaza-young-entrepreneurs-web-based-startups
What if that woman felt less of herself comparing her revenues to Uber's success? You never know. So often we see a common man's success completely being overshadowed by someone else's. This world is certainly not the easiest place to navigate!
One specific term to bring up, when we talk of comparison, is the word "mediocre". I want to kill that word. Whoever coined that - did you know that this word has led to the death of countless fabulous human beings?
"Salieri was a hard working musician but he could never transcend
mediocrity. Mozart's presence was a constant reminder of what he could
never be. He vowed to destroy Mozart."
What Salieri would have actually done is - kill himself in that course. He killed Salieri to become Mozart. Why Oh Why.. Why this term? A person is mediocre only when he's not done his personal best. If he's given his best but his best is different from Mozart's best, it's not his fault. In your appraisal you can be at the bottom of a bellcurve but you need to have the maturity to understand that it's not you who's mediocre. Your specific skill in comparison to a lot of others, is ranked that way and it should be fine. It should not cause sadness or humiliation or depression.
Mediocre today means comparison - relational operator. How can a person become a thing to be compared?
I'm
not saying that I am a saint who never felt mediocre. I am a victim of
not having understood that term. But after I started reading Osho and
Sadhguru and others I came to know what they meant. I understood a
little more about jealousy and comparison. I understood that my path and
goal and unique to me. I cannot share it with others. Parts of the
journey and feelings I can share, not the entire one. I have very
occasional pangs of jealousy when I see someone excelling in the
creative field, but even then I totally understand that they come with
different talents and so there is no question of comparison. And I feel
that this whole fan-dom is wasting my time.
When we become someone's fans, we internally aspire to become them. That maybe doing a lot more harm to us.
Most people spend their lives trying to become like someone else. The
constant comparing and aspiring to be someone different, the need to be
one up on somebody, just wastes the fundamental possibility in a human
being.
The following is an awesome compilation of articles regarding jealousy and comparison.
http://www.ishafoundation.org/blog/sadhguru/masters-words/living-free-of-comparison/
http://www.osho.com/read/featured-articles/other-myself/what-is-jealousy-and-why-does-it-hurt-so-much
http://mindofnature.wordpress.com/2014/07/16/osho-on-uniqueness-and-comparison/
How you are should never be determined by how someone else is. If you allow that, you will be a slave to that someone. Sadhguru
A human being need not be useful. If he or she blossoms into a full-fledged human being, that is good enough. Sadhguru
The key points in these articles is:
- you have not allowed your own juices to flow.
- You know your inside, and you know the others’ outside: that creates jealousy.
- Because you have not developed your inner treasures, you feel jealous of others.
- Spend your entire life finding your abilities - then transcend them.
Also, as a parallel, we have UT prof Raj talk about similar things and this is research based evidence.
http://happysmarts.com/how-negative-is-your-mental-chatter/
"Our mental chatter is rooted in goals and values to which most of us blindly subscribe. As
such, it’s not surprising that our thoughts revolve around inferiority,
love, and control. For example, most of are brought up to succeed and
excel in life; as a result, we are habituated to comparing ourselves—in
terms of our skills, talents and endowments—with that of our peers,
which generates inferiority-related thoughts. I find it interesting that the very things that most of us believe to
be the means to happiness—a sense of superiority over others, finding
our true love, and gaining control—ultimately undermine it.
I wonder whether people’s negative mental chatter would turn positive
if they stopped pursuing superiority, love and control. This is an idea
that’s certainly worth exploring. "
The problem is, these thoughts happen subconsciously. These comparisons.. this not living it up.. not upto the mark.. all these comparisons happen at such a terrifying speed that we ourselves don't know when they happen and most importantly how such thoughts happen. Years of exposure to success, the trophies, the medals, the award ceremonies, the magazines, newspapers, the sexiest woman alive tags, Entrepreneur of the year, 100 most promising tech startups,.....have seeped into us. Years of exposure have altered the subconscious programming.
Now that we've spoken enough about success, what is the seed whose flower is success? Aspirations or desires or dreams or ambitions. How are our ambitions shaped? Are our desires our own? The media portrays so many fields as glamorous and unknowingly we tend to dream about them. So many millions want to make it as film stars. It may not be their real destiny. It's due to the glamour associated with that world that so many like it. So is it with technology or nowadays cooking. We don't evaluate so thoroughly our choices and interests. We get carried away and make choices that are not meant for us. It need not be a big decision like career - even small things like - how you want to dress, what kind of woman you want to be - are all determined by the society in which you grow up. A friend of mine recently said that if I'd been a Punjabi and she'd been a Tamilian - we both would have been considered very successful women! We just had to swap spaces to feel successful because the way our own society definied successful or intelligent women excluded us from competition.
Alain De Botton's pearls of wisdom here about how important it is to have original, customized ambitions for ourselved -
"One of the interesting things about success is that we think we know
what it means. A lot of the time our ideas about what it would mean to
live successfully are not our own. They’re sucked in from other people.
And we also suck in messages from everything from the television to
advertising to marketing, etcetera. These are hugely powerful forces
that define what we want and how we view ourselves. What I want to argue
for is not that we should give up on our ideas of success, but that we
should make sure that they are our own. We should focus in on our ideas
and make sure that we own them, that we’re truly the authors of our own
ambitions. Because it’s bad enough not getting what you want, but it’s
even worse to have an idea of what it is you want and find out at the
end of the journey that it isn’t, in fact, what you wanted all along."
So, here is how together it all becomes a dangerous cocktail. Society/Media tries to set your dreams.
Society/Media defines success for you. How you should live, what you should buy, what kind of car to aspire for - these get programmed into you and you just become an earning tool which earns and spends. Your school, in all probability killed most of you. You were not even consulted before the code was inserted into you. You just execute that code to the benefit of a whole lot of businesses. Your dreams aren't yours. Your definition of success is flawed. You're blindly living a life - feeling lonely and empty many a times. What's yours is just the guilt and pain that you carry because of disappointment with yourself and you don't even know why you feel so low.
I was thinking yesterday that we need to bring up our kids without any definition of success..
I think the ultimate goal for a human is to flower and we all flower in unique ways. No two roses flower alike. We all require a little different composition of air, water, fire and earth.
Some of us grow in forests. Some of us at home. Some of us have good gardeners. Some of us grow on our own. Some of us need improvers to help us grow. Some of us can grow even in less sunlight. Some of us need less water. We're so genetically, culturally different. We come with different abilities but we all have the ability to discover ourselves and accept ourselves and lead very very fulfilling lives. I have seen such people too. People who love literature, people who love arts - who did not chase fame and success and settled into beautiful corners of the world to lead very "ordinary" lives - content lives.
I think whatever our age be, we should rewrite the definitions of life, success, etc. We need to break the old self and reconstruct a new one with new definitions of our own. Once the new definitions get absorbed in the subconscious through enough repetitions, I think the old ones will not hold us prisoners.
So, if we exist, as life, not as a product to be compared, we free ourselves. We liberate ourself so that we can discover who we are and do what we're meant to do. We need to have a new relation with ourself - a relation which is rooted in respect and love and acceptance. A relation where the chatter in the head is full of laughter and original aspirations. We need to relook our goals and beliefs and change many of them. We need to define what we want to be; what we want to do; what kind of life we want to lead and just follow that even if it doesn't make sense to any other human. By creating such an ambience inside our head - we can push ourselves to do more.. to treat ourself with love, to handle any disappointments with courage, to surpass ourself, to accept changes, to alter our goals if required and eventually lead fulfilling lives.
For me personally, I have reached a significant stage in my journey. A lot of basic things are falling into place. The ground is being readied for something to bloom.
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I feel that a real living form is the result of the individual’s effort
to create the living thing out of the adventure of his spirit into the
unknown—where it has experienced something—felt something—it has not
understood—and from that experience comes the desire to make the
unknown—known. By unknown—I mean the thing that means so much to the
person that wants to put it down—clarify something he feels but does not
clearly understand—sometimes he partially knows why—sometimes he
doesn’t—sometimes it is all working in the dark—but a working that must
be done—Making the unknown—known—in terms of one’s medium is
all-absorbing—if you stop to think of the form—as form you are lost—The
artist’s form must be inevitable—You mustn’t even think you won’t
succeed—Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant—there is no such thing.
Making your unknown known is the important thing—and keeping the
unknown always beyond you—catching crystallizing your simpler clearer
version of life—only to see it turn stale compared to what you vaguely
feel ahead—that you must always keep working to grasp—the form must take care of its self if you can keep your vision clear.
