Quick Tales: Threatened By Success?

I do not see the value of being threatened by someone else, by being scared because they are better than you. This feeling would sometimes come across as jealousy. Why do most of us feel this way?

For me, I believe we have been brainwashed by the system to instinctively compete with each other; to get ahead while we can. We were taught that we should DESPISE the competition and crush them to pieces.

However, I learned that having this kind of mentality doesn’t show the compromise we do to follow mainstream beliefs. Rather, it’s about how we see ourselves in other people. It’s about your mind’s own limitation and inability to discover your own opportunities.

“…my journey, my vision and my purpose will always be different than everybody else and so is theirs.”

The more that we tear each other apart, the more time we dedicated for senseless, unproductive activities. Instead of reading or practicing your speaking skills, you spend hours and hours trying to figure out how to hinder somebody else’s success. Instead of finding your own peace, you speak ill of other people and spread rumors that are probably not true.

In the Philippines, we have these afternoon shows called, “TeleDrama.” Most of them are repetitive stories of children lost by their rich parents. The child would then grow up in an intertwined family of the rich and the poor lifestyle of the child’s birth parents. The story would then have a twist of fate and the oppressed characters will then become rich and take revenge.

I thought to myself, if these people just focused on moving forward with their lives, especially now that they have a bigger opportunity to grow their wealth in front of them instead of looking back to those who hurt them and using the resources they now have to plot revenge, they’d be much better off.

At the end of the day, I guess the protagonists always get the last laugh, but both parties have already experienced massive losses. About 90 percent of the time, the two would eventually hold hands and make peace, but only after the war they both started has ended.

This teaches viewers that if you achieve your dreams, your next step is to go back to every single person who hurt you, bullied you and mistreated you and give them not only a piece of your mind, but a piece of everything you’ve earned and worked for.

I don’t get it.

On the other hand, I see people who are extremely successful and still have a lot to share. While knowing there are people who didn’t have their backs when they were starting out and critics who did try to bring them down, they still moved forward and showed the world their highest potential.

What’s the difference with these two? DECISION.

We should develop a personal habit of genuine praise. I’m not talking about having the guts to simply tell someone, “Hey, that was awesome work!” This is not just about you sprouting words of encouragement you don’t really mean. If that’s what you want to do, you might as well forget about this practice altogether. It’s not going to work.

This is about building your character up and knowing that success is not exclusive. The other person’s accomplishments do not mean you will not get yours. If someone was able to buy their own car for the first time, does that mean you will never, in your life, get your own BMW? Well, it depends. Do you want it?

We should start training our minds to shift the jealousy mentality to a celebratory one. The more success your peers have, the healthier your circle of group is. They have their journey and you have yours. But at the end of the day, it should all come down to our humanity and our ability to genuinely rejoice for each other.

I see hard working people in my network all the time and whenever there’s a big win, I take my time to congratulate them. Having battles of my own just made me aware of how difficult life is. Yes, there are wins that come by easy. There are existing biases out there. But my journey, my vision and my purpose will always be different than everybody else and so is theirs. They have their own challenges and I have mine. That’s all there is to it.

There are competitions in business, but there are also partnerships. Businesses thrive not because they have the best product in the world, but because they know how to help their users achieve a better life.

If you begin a habit in yourself to know and recognize others, you’d find yourself having that same kind of support as well.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Pat Villaceran is an author and social entrepreneur. Her books are available at THE REVOLUZIONNE Library. She builds companies that foster excellence and social responsibility. Her focus is on finance, media, publishing and other ventures. She also mentors entrepreneurs and career personalities on success, high-level business strategies, global market expansion and more. If you want to get on a coaching call with Pat, you can reserve your slot today!