Why Success Is More Dangerous Than Failure

Success is a dangerous business. The emotional complexity that comes with achieving—or exceeding—our goals and objectives to the praise of others is hard to wrap our minds around.

When we experience an extremely high level of success our automatic reaction is often: 1) How can I sustain this? Because I really need to sustain this… and 2) how can I achieve something even greater? Both of these reactions pile on more mental stress. Add this kind of systematic thinking to multiple successes in one person’s life (on a grand scale, like Seymour Hoffman, for example) and what you get in the end is not gratification or satisfaction—or even contentment—what you get is the soul-sucking burden to do more and do it better as a way of life.

I probably don’t have to say it, but living like that sucks. Without the proper perspective and mental outlook, success can actually be more destructive than failure.

Bottom line: Don’t hold tightly to success or failure—it’s dangerous mental business.