The TED talk, a kinder, gentler philosophy of success had a lot of amazing points. He stated that the world is full of snobs, which, when you look at it, it is. Societal people judge you based on your achievements and your career and your materialistic belongings. It doesn’t matter what your character is like. Another thing he pointed out was that envy is a dominant feeling in society and it is linked with the wish for equality. If we didn’t wish we had the equivalent of someone else, we would not be envious of them. He also explained his observation that people take things personally, especially failure. And finally he noted that we are the authors and illustrators of our own ideas and ambitions.
You don’t have to step too far back to realize that people will always judge you based on your achievements. Our family only tells us they're proud of us when we get a new job or pass a test or graduate high school, but never when we hold open the door for someone or compliment a stranger. People have started to care less and less about the character of others and more about what they have or what they’ve done. It has gotten to the point that successful people are now turning snobby and will do anything to get to the top, even cheat or trip people on the ladder up. This is partially because we want to be better than everyone else.
If we are not better than everyone else, we turn envious. Why is that exactly? If we were all equal, we wouldn’t have to envy each other. What would there be to envy if we all had similar careers and income and belongings? But we don’t live in that kind of world. We live in a world in which nothing is fair in love and war. We want to be better than everyone else and until we are, we build a vine of envy to climb to the top. And when we fail, we take it extremely personally.
Nothing is worse than failing after you’ve given your all. It feels like your best just is not good enough. That is probably why we take failure so personally. We put so much of ourselves into what we do that it feels like part of ourself has failed. That is probably why some people have stopped trying. They are so afraid of failure and the pressure to do well that they’d rather not try and know that they didn’t put any effort into it than put all their effort into it and fail.
We are the authors and illustrators of our own ideas. We come up with our own ideas and create our own ambitions. We may be influenced by others but our ideas are our own.
You don’t have to step too far back to realize that people will always judge you based on your achievements. Our family only tells us they're proud of us when we get a new job or pass a test or graduate high school, but never when we hold open the door for someone or compliment a stranger. People have started to care less and less about the character of others and more about what they have or what they’ve done. It has gotten to the point that successful people are now turning snobby and will do anything to get to the top, even cheat or trip people on the ladder up. This is partially because we want to be better than everyone else.
If we are not better than everyone else, we turn envious. Why is that exactly? If we were all equal, we wouldn’t have to envy each other. What would there be to envy if we all had similar careers and income and belongings? But we don’t live in that kind of world. We live in a world in which nothing is fair in love and war. We want to be better than everyone else and until we are, we build a vine of envy to climb to the top. And when we fail, we take it extremely personally.
Nothing is worse than failing after you’ve given your all. It feels like your best just is not good enough. That is probably why we take failure so personally. We put so much of ourselves into what we do that it feels like part of ourself has failed. That is probably why some people have stopped trying. They are so afraid of failure and the pressure to do well that they’d rather not try and know that they didn’t put any effort into it than put all their effort into it and fail.
We are the authors and illustrators of our own ideas. We come up with our own ideas and create our own ambitions. We may be influenced by others but our ideas are our own.