The Dark Side of Success

Who doesn't wants to be successful, right? But very few understand the importance and need for success in their lives. I know everyone succeeds in some or the other way in their lives, but I believe that every one of us once in a while dreams of being as successful as Elon Musk or any other famous personality. We keep hearing all the wonderful stories from the lives of famous and successful personalities, we fancy their lifestyle and in doing so often set ourselves on the wrong path. Dreaming big is a good thing, but let's be practical here, we dream only the success, never the hard work that needs to be put on to achieve that. A famous person once said that passion is just an idle person's idea, successful people just give their everything to a particular idea and if the number of hours put into that is sufficient, success will be achieved automatically.

Biggest hurdles

Before we move towards the dark side of success, let's talk about the herd mentality. We often become like people around us and being a common person is not that bad. Most of our parents never got success in any of the fields be it finance, mental health, or spiritual knowledge, and because of that we also never learned to aspire big, we just fancied being big. Parenting plays a very important role in how you will turn out in your life. Let me give you some examples, Elon Musk's mother raised the world's greatest inventor, a pioneer in the food industry, and a director. All three of her children are at the topmost position in their respective fields. Swami Vivekananda's mother used to give her own meal to saints and go to bed without a single grain of food. There are a ton of examples where successful people had at least one or two exceptional people in their lives. I guess most of us are missing these exceptional people in our lives. 

Another common thing which has been carved in stones in our minds is that exceptional and successful means famous and if you actually know some exceptional people in your life, you'll know that they live a very simple life, this idea of exceptional equals to famous is just because of the TV stars and heroes who keep coming on our screens all the time. Exceptional people are not that different from regular people it's just that they are extremely good at a thing or two. A friend of mine is a world-class researcher, yet he struggles to get a job, he is exceptionally hard-working but has a zero sense of how corporate works and society treat people. I know another person, who has total control over his lust (he's a celibate) but you may take him for a person who is not a person of great mental strength. Even my own brother is highly capable of studying for long hours, he picks his books literally within 2 minutes of waking up, he studies even after a travel of 15 hours. Even his finances are all sorted, yet he studies like a desperate person preparing for a job.

And the last hurdle is that we are not dying of poverty, almost no one among us is living in a shithole thus we don't feel the need to rise above our current status. Extreme poverty often brings the situation of Do or Die and since none of us are facing that, we just take comfort in performing better than our neighbors. Our common life makes our goals common thus preventing our minds to set really high achievable goals. Everyone in our circle expects us to get a job and settle down in life. I bet that your parents never told you that you are capable of great things and you should aspire to change the face of the earth, instead they told you to work so that you can buy comfort in your life.

We'are not finding the truly inspiring people in our lives and I often think that our screen time has made us incapable of even looking to find inspiration in the right direction.

The dark side

The fancy lifestyle of rich people is quite often far from reality, it's not you who'll squander/enjoy your wealth, it's your family members, who flaunt it. So, firstly give up this idea that you'll enjoy your wealth. Secondly, successful people don't work to get rich or successful, they just work and as a by-product of their efforts, they get both fame and money. It's lonely on the other side of the lake and you may fancy going there but most of you wouldn't want to stay there. Let me explain this point, Elon musk works more than 120 hours a week, currently, he is the 5th richest person in the world. Now just ask yourself, how many hours would you have worked if you were given his billions? In the inception days of Microsoft, Bill Gates used to recheck every piece of code written by his associates, I guess you won't even recheck your own codes to know whether they are optimized or not. Warren Buffet used to sit with investors as early as at the age of 12. Shreya Ghoshal gave up on playing with her friends and enjoying her childhood so she can riyaaz and improve her singing. Vivekananda lived without food, clothing, and shelter for weeks before his famous speech in Chicago, 1893. He even got chased off by police for being thought of as a thief, none of us would even dare to travel to a different city with almost no money in our hands, let alone to a different continent.

Ask yourself are you willing to sacrifice your youth, friends, a chance to fall in love, be with your family, all the parties, binge-watching series, 8-10 hours of precious sleep, your love of killing time, wandering around different places, trying out new things, playing computer games, chatting with your girlfriend/boyfriend and many more things. All the great people sacrifice a lot of these things and it's extremely lonely to be successful, they can't stop moving ahead in life thus often look to find their solace in the next challenge. It's a curse for so many of them that they can't enjoy what they have. Michael Phelps, the greatest swimmer of all time thought of committing suicide after winning 23 Olympic gold medals, the most no of medals in entire Olympic history.

Another downside of being successful is that even the people close to you start envying and hating you for no reason, they may not say so, but seeing you grab all the success makes them jealous. You are not left with many friends, you start getting surrounded by yes men, and people are always looking to get favors from you. You start avoiding your friends who are not doing good in their lives because your mere presence boils their blood. You can't move freely and always need to behave responsibly in public. You are always fearful of becoming less important, you always have the pressure of being a good example for the people following you. You'are supposed to be charitable and always help people otherwise you may come off as a jerk. So, next time you think of becoming great/successful, ask yourself this, what's more important being alone on the top or being a common person with a little more time, friends, and chill.

Success may or may not bring happiness, it's just an object of your mind you possess to tell the world how hard you have worked in your life to be happy, but in reality, happiness already lies in your heart   ~Unknown

People who inspired me

Krishna - let's be badass

Chanakya - that's how you run a country

Leonardo da Vinci - I can do anything

Bhagat Singh - I dare you to sacrifice for your motherland

Vivekananda - Let's understand spirituality

S.C. Bose - You can serve your people from anywhere in the world

Ramanujan - I'm a god in maths, still, my life is a struggle

Elon Musk - I'm today's Da Vinci

and the list goes on .........